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The Porcelain Mask 


A ‘Detective Story 


BY 

JOHN JAY (pHICHESTER / 



CHELSEA HOUSE 
79 Seventh Avenue New York City 







1Z_3 

■?o 



Copyright, 1924 
By CHELSEA HOUSE 


The Porcelain Mask 




(Printed in the United States of America) 

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreigJi 
languages, including the Scandinavian. 



To my Aunts, 

ELLA and ANNA 

who once told a very small boy that 
he would some day grow up and write 
a book. 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Joan Sheridan Returns. 9 

II. The Squalid House ...... 19 

III. Helen Answers Her Letter ... 34 

IV. “What Does It Mean?” .40 

V. Victor Sarbella. 30 

VI. In The Studio.39 

VII. The Get-away.36 

VIII. Caught in the Web.81 

IX. The Open Door ..94 

X. Common Sense.102 

XL Bushnell Calls the Police . • 112 

XII. “Wiggly” Price.126 

XIII. What Did Joan Know?. 13T 

XIV. The Girl in the Sarbella Case . . 147 

XV. Sarbella Speaks.137 

XVI. The Four Clews. 163 

XVII. Kirklan Protests . 1’79 

XVIIL Two Brands of Cigarettes .... 186 

XIX. Enter Sergeant Tish ...... 198 
















CONTENTS 


CHAPTEK PAGE 

XX. A Queer Jumble . 205 

XXL A Cry of Terror. 215 

XXII. What the Cook Saw. 228 

XXIII. The Trapped Rat. 238 

XXIV. Haskins Keeps His Secret .... 244 

XXV. The Skepticism of Sergeant Tish . 256 

XXVI. Bits of Tallow. 270 

XXVII. Wiggly Remains Unconvinced . . 283 

XXVIII. The Black Smudge. 295 

XXIX. “Let the Guilty Man Speak!” . . 307 

XXX. Wiggly Makes a Wager . • < • • 313 








THE PORCELAIN MASK 

CHAPTER I 

JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS 

O NE of the village taxis, a sorry, disreputable 
affair, with noisily clattering fenders, dashed 
bumpily along the rural highway and turned with 
precarious suddenness into the driveway, lined on 
either side by great walnut trees that formed a 
leafy tunnel to the big house at the far end. It 
was, despite considerable age, a magnificent house, 
and it had been modernized with green-striped 
awnings and sun rooms. The taxi was heavily 
loaded with luggage. There was one passenger, 
a girl of twenty-one or two, with an attractive 
face and expressive dark eyes, now shining with a 
light of eagerness, as she leaned toward the door 
of the jouncing vehicle. One slim, gloved hand 
rested upon the catch. 

The little car came to a skidding halt beneath the 
old-fashioned portico, as the driver jammed the 
brakes with a suddenness that pitched his fare 
violently forward, knocking her hat awry. But 
even this failed to dim her happy, expectant smile; 
she did not so much as bother to straighten the hat. 
She had the door open and was out before the 
driver could double as footman. 

“Hope I didn’t jar you up, lady, but y’ said 
hurry, an’ I fed ’er the gas,” he said with a wide 
grin that revealed two prominently missing teeth. 


10 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“She’s a great li’le car, ain’t she, fer goin’ on the 
fifth season?” 

The girl nodded and gave him a dollar bill. 

“Don’t bother about the bags,” she told him. 
“Just leave them anywhere, and Fll have Bates 
carry them in.” 

She ran briskly up the brief rise of steps from 
the driveway to the wide porch that semicircled 
the house on two sides. The entrance was around 
the turn; she paused suddenly at sight of the 
strange young woman who reclined in the couch 
hammock, asleep. For a moment she stared in 
surprise, wondering who she was. Women visitors 
were unusual at Greenacres. 

“How beautiful she is!” murmured the girl, let¬ 
ting her eyes linger on the soft, oval face of the 
sleeper, crowned with bronze hair. “I wonder who 
she can be?” She softened her step and continued 
across the porch to the entrance. 

Hardly had she entered the reception hall when 
Bates spied her and came rushing toward her, with 
that peculiar, shambling gait of his, a broad smile 
crinkling his thin, leathery face. 

“Heaven bless us, it’s Miss Joan!” he exclaimed. 

“Oh, ‘Daddy’ Bates!” she cried. “It’s so won¬ 
derful to get home again! The finest thing 
about going away is coming back. Only bit over 
a month, and it’s seemed a year!” 

Bates was the Gilmore butler, but he had been 
in the family since the time Joan was a child, 
and, in this moment of home-coming exuberance, 
it was only natural that she should use the old 
affectionate address. Bates, his hands clasped in 


JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS 11 

front of his chest, continued to smile fondly and 
proudly. 

“Well! Well!” he chuckled. “Won’t Mrs. Gil¬ 
more be happy to see you again. Miss Joan! 
Surprised, too; she wasn’t expecting you until to¬ 
morrow.” 

“The boat docked a day ahead of time,” she ex¬ 
plained, “and I didn’t telegraph. Where is mother?” 

“She went upstairs less than half an hour since. 
Your bags. Miss Joan?” 

“Outside, Bates; I told the taxi man to diunp them 
out any old place. Take them right up, if you 
please. Bates; there are some little things I bought 
on the other side, and I didn’t forget you, either.” 

Bates sobered. 

“Your room-” he began, but broke off sud¬ 

denly, looking decidedly imcomfortable. 

Joan, in her excitement, did not notice. “Why, 
of course, my room!” she cried gayly, making for 
the stairs and taking the steps, two at a time. 
Bates stared after her, wagging his head sadly, 
and his thin shoulders moved with a lugubrious 
sigh. 

“Poor Miss Joan!” he murmured. “It’s going to 
be an awful shock to her; I didn’t have the heart 
to tell her. And her room, too!” He shambled 
out to the porch for the luggage. 

Reaching the upper hall, Joan went swiftly to the 
left wing of the house, where her mother had her 
private sitting room, bedroom, and bath. With 
a quick gesture she flung open the door and, arms 
reaching out eagerly, fairly leaped at the little 
gray-haired woman who sat by the window, reading. 

“Mumsey!” 



12 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Before Mrs. Gilmore could get to her feet, the 
girl had swuoped down on her in a cyclone of 
joy, smothering her with kisses and leaving her 
almost breathless with hugs. 

“I—I didn’t expect you until to-morrow, dear,” 
gasped Mrs. Gilmore. “Why didn’t you wire and 
let us meet you at the station? Goodness, child, 
give me air!” 

“Oh, it’s so much nicer to surprise people,” 
laughed Joan. “How are you?” 

“We’ve all been well.” 

Joan sat on the arm of the chair and cuddled her 
mother close. 

“It’s so wonderful to he home again,” she mur¬ 
mured happily. “It was a wonderful trip, my first 
sea voyage, and the Sharps were perfectly won¬ 
derful to me—all through southern France by 
motor—^but there’s no place in all the world like 
Greenacres. How is Kirk getting along with the 
new novel? Has he missed his severest critic?” 

An anxious, half-frightened look came into Mrs. 
Gilmore’s face. “Kirklan,” she answered slowly, an 
ominous note creeping into her voice, “hasn’t been 
writing much during—during the past three weeks. 
He couldn’t really be expected to, since-” 

Joan’s fingers tightened about her mother’s hand. 

“Mother! Something—something has happened to 
Kirk! Is he ill?” 

“No, dear, Kirklan is perfectly well, but he- 

Again Mrs. Gilmore’s voice came to a halting stop. 

“Why don’t you tell me? The tone of your 
voice frightens me. What has happened to Kirk?” 

“An author can’t be expected to do much writing, 
Joan, when—when he is on his honeymoon,” Mrs. 



JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS 


13 


Gilmore finished faintly. She felt the girl’s fingers, 
still resting across her own, tremble and become 
cold. 

Joan’s face had turned ghastly pale and there 
was a stunned dullness in her dark eyes. “His— 

his honeymoon?” she whispered. “You mean- 

Oh, you can’t mean that Kirk has married?” 

Mrs. Gilmore nodded. 

“Yes, he married—about ten days after you sailed. 
It was a surprise—a shock—to all of us. The 
first we knew of it was when he brought her home 
with him.” 

Joan was making an ineffectual attempt to keep 
her emotions in check, to conceal the evidence that 
the news had been a terrible blow to her. 

“Why—why, I had no idea that Kirk was even 
interested in any one.” 

“Neither did any of us. It seems that he fell 
madly in love with her almost at first sight; they 
were married, I believe, a week after their first 
meeting. I can’t understand how a man would rush 
headlong into marriage like that, although she is 
pretty.” 

Joan’s mind reverted to the beautiful woman she 
had seen asleep in the porch hammock. 

“She—she is here now? Then that—that woman 
I saw downstairs is Kirk’s wife? Kirk’s wife?” 
She laughed unsteadily. “It’s so hard for me to 
believe—coming so suddenly like this. Yes, she is 
pretty; not only pretty—beautiful.” 

She walked slowly to the window and stood 
there, her back to the room, trying to keep her 
face from her mother’s eyes. But Mrs. Gilmore 
was not deceived; she had known for a long time 



14 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

and had feared that the situation would bring only 
unhappiness. 

Although Joan was Mrs. Gilmore’s daughter, she 
still bore her father’s name of Sheridan. Her mother, 
left a widow, had married Peyton Gilmore, a child¬ 
hood sweetheart, who had himself been previously 
married. Peyton Gilmore had been a well-known 
New York lawyer. Those with long memories may 
remember that he had dropped dead in a crowded 
courtroom, duing a famous murder trial, while 
pleading for the life of his client. There was a 
son, Kirklan Gilmore, only twelve years old at the 
time of his father’s death, and Kirklan s rearing 
had fallen to his stepmother. The two families, 
merged into one, had long occupied the picturesque, 
rural New York estate of Greenacres, without fric¬ 
tion or discord. 

Joan and Kirklan had always hit it off well 
together, and when, after a try at law, Kirklan 
had turned to writing, it was Joan who sympathized 
the most over his failures and rejoiced the most 
over his successes. Realizing that Joan’s deft 
touches had helped the tremendous success of his 
novel, “Rogue’s Paradise,” Kirklan had given his 
stepsister a trip abroad.' 

The silence became so Tong, so painful that Mrs. 
Gilmore felt that something had to be said. 

“Her name,” she murmured, “is Helen—Helen 
Banton before she married Kirklan.” 

“Does—does he seem to be—^very much in love 
with her, mother?” 

“Very much in love with her,” Mrs. Gilmore an¬ 
swered, and Joan winced. 


JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS 15 

‘T—I hope he will be very happy,” the latter 
said with a muffled voice. 

Mrs. Gilmore shook her head slowly. “Fm afraid 
that he won’t be, my dear. A pretty face is not 
sufficient to make a man happy. ‘Marry in haste, 
repent at leisure.’ It’s an old saying, but it’s true 
—as most of the old sayings are. Kirklan has made 
a mistake, a terrible mistake.” 

“I don’t believe you like her, mother.” 

“My likes or dislikes have nothing to do with 
it. They have few tastes in common; already she 
is sick and tired of Greenacres, and you know 
how Kirklan loves it out here. She has no interest 
in his work, and you know how must he needs 
sympathy, encouragement. He’s not the kind that 
can forge on alone; the kind of wife he should 
have-” 

“Mother, don’t! Who was she—^how did he 
happen to meet her?” 

“She was employed in some minor capacity by 
Kirklan’s publishers,” Mrs. Gilmore replied. “As 
to who she is—I wonder. Yes, I wonder. I don’t 
think even Kirklan knows anything about her. I 
don’t consider it a good sign when a girl is reticent 
about her family. Kirklan says, ‘I’ve married a 
girl I love, not a family t^ee.’ ” 

Joan winced again, for that was a line she had 
written into Kirklan’s successful novel. 

“If—if they’re in love with each other, mother, 
I suppose that’s all that matters.” 

“He’s in love with her, but they’re not in love 
with each other, and those one-sided romances al¬ 
ways end in disaster. I can’t help but feel that 
she is going to smash his life.” 


16 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“She—she’d better not!” whispered Joan, her 
hands clenched. “We won’t talk about it any more 
—please. I’m going to my room and unpack. I’ll— 
I’ll come back in a little while, mother.” Her tone 
was weary, lifeless. 

Mrs Gilmore gave her daughter another quick 
glance, as she prepared to deliver the second blow. 

“I—I guess you’ll miss your old room, Joan; 
you’ve always loved it so, with its view of the 
river.” 

Startled, bewildered, the girl turned away from 
the window. “Miss my old room? Why, mother, 
what—^what do you mean?” 

“Kirklan had your things moved to the east wing, 
dear. He tried to make her understand, but-” 

“The things moved—from my room!” cried Joan. 
“Kirklan did that? He—he tried to make her 
understand? You mean that woman-” 

“It wasn’t Kirklan’s fault, Joan; he tried hard 
enough to reason with her, but his wife is so 
headstrong. It is the best room in the house, of 
course, and I suppose she felt that she had a 
right, as the new mistress of Greenacres, to it. 
The place is Kirklan’s property.” 

“That—^that woman—in my room!” There was 
a catching sob in Joan’s voice. “Oh, how dare she? 
And Kirk let her do it.” 

“You don’t understand how headstrong she is,” 
Mrs. Gilmore explained hastily. “She’s the sort 
who demands, who takes what she wants. Kirklan 
tried to avert it, hut I suppose it’s hard for a man 
to deny his bride anything. Kirklan has the ad¬ 
joining room, a separate sleeping chamber. It’s the 
modern thing, I believe, these days. She’s had a 




JOAN SHERIDAN RETURNS 


17 


doorway cut through; the carpenters finished their 
work yesterday. I knew you would resent giving 
up your room.” 

“Of course I resent it!” flared Joan. “She has 

no right-” She paused and then added bitterly, 

“No, I suppose I’m wrong; the house is Kirk’s,, 
and she did have a right—to everything. I’m 
going to unpack now, there are some little souvenirs 
I brought back with me-” 

This was but an excuse to get away, to be alone. 
Leaving the sentence unfinished, she fled. A mo¬ 
ment later she was in the east wing, where her 
personal belongings had been banished by the 
usurper. Some one—Kirk, no doubt—had tried to 
hang her pictures in the same position they had 
occupied in the beloved room that had been hers 
for so long. An effort had been made to make 
things appear the same, but they were not the 
same; they would never be the same. Here she 
felt a stranger, almost like a guest in a transient 
hotel. Nothing would ever be the same—now. 

Rates had already brought up her bags, and 
they were stacked in an orderly pile on the floor, 
but Joan made no move to unpack. That had been 
but an excuse. She stumbled toward her bed and 
flung herself across it, giving way to a torrent of 
tears. 

“I love him sol” she sobbed. “It never would 
have happened—if I hadn’t gone away. I know 
it wouldn’t have happened. No other woman has 
a right to him when I love him so much.” 

Presently she got herself in check and went list¬ 
lessly to the window and, lifting back the curtains, 
looked out. From here she had not so much as a 




18 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


glimpse of the Tappao Zee, where the Hudson 
broadens a good three miles wide. In her old 

room, curled up in the window seat, with soft 
pillows at her back, she had been able to look out 
across the water to the rugged rise of the Palisades 
looming up picturesquely from the New Jersey shore 
—and dream. 

And now in that other room—^her room—^would 
be Kirklan’s wife! Perhaps the other woman and 
Kirklan would sit in her beloved window seat, his 
arm about her; the thought of it made the blood 

pound in Joan’s brain, made a red mist swim 

before her eyes. 

Below her a figure moved across the lawn, a 
graceful figure in a white sport skirt. Even from 
that distance the woman’s bronze hair glinted in the 
strong sunlight. Joan stared down, her hands 

clenching until the nails bit deep into her palms. 

“She has taken two of the things I have loved 
best!” she whispered fiercely. “I hate her! I can’t 
help it, I hate her!” 


CHAPTER II 


THE SQUALID HOUSE 

R elic of the horse-and-carriage days was the 
Gilmore stable, with living quarters for the 
now obsolete coachman and footman. Kirklan Gil¬ 
more, that he might have more detachment and 
quiet than the house afforded, had remodeled the 
stable into a studio, and here it was that he did 
his writing. Success in anything means hard work, 
and authorship is no exception. Being a successful 
novelist, he was a hard worker, but for weeks 
now, except for a mildly curious visit by Helen, 
who had been frankly disappointed in the unpre¬ 
tentiousness of her husband’s workshop, the place 
had been locked. The manuscript of the new novel, 
for which his publishers waited fretfully, lay un¬ 
touched and uncompleted. 

It was two days after Joan’s home-coming. As 
had been customary since her arrival at Greenacres 
as a bride, the new Mrs. Gilmore was having a 
breakfast tray in her room, and she sat at a small 
table by the window which commanded Joan 
Sheridan’s beloved view of the Tappan Zee. 

Frilly, lacy things were becoming to the new 
mistress of Greenacres, and she was an alluring 
picture, with the loose, flowing sleeves of her morn¬ 
ing gown falling back from shapely arms, as she 
lifted her coffee cup. Morning is the severest test 
of a woman’s beauty, and, only twenty minutes 
out of bed, although it was half an hour past nine, 


20 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Helen Gilmore was undeniably a beautiful woman. 
Her age might have been twenty-three; it may 
have been even twenty-seven, for she was of the 
type that clings long to youth. Just now, however, 
there was in her blue eyes a look of brooding dis¬ 
content that does not become a bride of three 
brief, honeymooning weeks. 

At the hallway door there sounded the rap of 
knuckles against wood, and in answer to the 
petulant, “Yes, come,” Bates, the butler, crossed 
the threshold with his shambling gait. 

“Mail for you, madam,” said Bates, holding a 
silver tray toward her. The topmost envelope was 
patently an advertising circular, which completely 
concealed the one beneath, and Helen with a con¬ 
temptuous glance waved the tray aside. 

“You should know better than bothering me with 
things like that,” she said shortly; “take it away.” 

“There is also a letter—a personal letter,” Bates 
answered stiffly, as he moved aside the offending 
advertisement, and revealed a small, cheap envelope, 
rather smudgy and addressed with a lead pencil 
in a ragged, scrawling script, as if the hand that 
wrote it was not far advanced beyond illiteracy. 
The postmark was New York City. 

Rather a strange, disreputable-looking missive, 
one might have thought, to be received by the 
mistress of Greenacres. Bates stared sharply, as 
he saw the startling effect that the sight of the 
letter had on Mrs. Gilmore. Her coffee cup, poised 
for a moment in mid-air, clattered down to the 
saucer, and her fingers, reaching swiftly for the 
envelope, trembled noticeably. Her face bad gone 
white, and into her eyes there came a look that 


THE SQUALID HOUSE 21 

was unquestionably apprehension, perhaps fear. 
With an effort she controlled herself. 

“Probably from my little nephew,” she said, evi¬ 
dently thinking to explain the smudgy appearance, 
the crudity of the handwriting. But Bates, moving 
toward the door with the perfunctory murmur, was 
not misled. 

“Huh, little nephew!” he grunted, as he went 
down the hall. “That was a man’s handwritin’. 
Poor Mr. Kirklan! I’m afraid he’s been fooled— 
fooled bad.” 

When the butler had gone, Helen Gilmore relaxed 
self-restraint, and there returned to her face that 
haunted look of fear. Several times she turned 
the envelope over in her unsteady hands, delaying 
the opening of it. 

“He’s traced me here!” she whispered. “He 
knows.” 

After another moment of hesitation she opened 
the envelope and drew forth a sheet of paper. 
Quickly her eyes went over the scrawl. It began 
with the address, “Dear Mrs. Gilmore,” and the 
last two words of that were underscored, as if there 
was a concealed gibe in the “Mrs. Gilmore.” 

I want to talk with you on some business. If you don’t 
want me to come there, you better come to see me. Phone 
Joe’s place & he’ll tell you where I am. 

It was unsigned, but no signature was needed 
for her to know the identity of the sender; she 
knew that all too well. Her hands clenched, crush¬ 
ing the paper between her fingers. 

“Oh, what a fool I’ve been to take this chancel” 


22 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


she exclaimed bitterly. “He’ll hound me, as he 
hounded me before. I—I thought I’d got away 
from him for good. I thought he was-” 

A step sounded down the hall, a quick step that 
she had learned to know during the past three 
weeks. Hastily she thrust the crumpled letter and 
its envelope into the bodice of her morning gown 
and, as the door opened, forced a smile to her lips. 

“Good morning, my dear,” she greeted her hus¬ 
band. “Your indolent wife is just finishing her 
breakfast. You look as if you had been up for 
hours, and you must be going somewhere!” 

Kirklan Gilmore, clad in a gray business suit, 
instead of white flannels, blazer coat, and canvas 
Oxfords that he wore for his mornings at home, 
crossed the room eagerly and bent to kiss the lips 
raised dutifully to him. 

Gilmore was dark, while his wife was fair. He 
was slender, and his eyes had something of a 
poet’s dreaminess in them—^black eyes, with an 
intense light when he felt any strong emotion, either 
personally or through the characters that he put 
down on paper and breathed the breath of life into. 
He sat down beside the narrow table and touched 
his fingers in a gentle caress to the back of his 
wife’s hand, as his eyes devoured her fondly. 

“You don’t know how wonderful you are, Helen! 
If I could only put you into a book—as you are. 
But I’m afraid it would turn out to be a volume 
of poetry, and poetry doesn’t make a best seller. 
You—you are the most beautiful thing that ever 
lived!” 

Despite an agitation that she could hardly keep 
from being observed, Helen flushed, and her eyes 



THE SQUALID HOUSE 23 

lighted with pleasure. She liked being told she 
was beautiful. It was the one story that never 
grew old to her. 

“Thanks, Kirklan; it’s nice of you to say that— 
especially in the morning. Why the street clothes? 
Are you going somewhere?” 

“Yes, I am, worse luck. That slave-driving pub¬ 
lisher of mine has called a halt to our honeymoon. 
A wire came from him this morning, commanding 
me to come in town and see him. I know what 
that means; he’s going to pep me and send me 
back to my knitting. Well, we can’t blame Atchin- 
son for that; I’ve promised him the new book for 
winter publication. Thank Heaven, it’s two thirds 
finished. I thought we might run into New York 
together; make the trip in the car, you know. 
There’ll be lunch with Atchinson.” 

Helen managed to look languid and bored. “Lunch 
with that old pill, Atchinson? It doesn’t appeal to 
me; but don’t you think we might go away while 
you are finishing the book? It will take you 
weeks upon weeks, and that means I’ve got to 
stick around this poky hole, mooning around by 
myself, while you’re locked in that old stable for 
endless hours. I’d like to go away, Kirklan.” 

Kirklan patted his wife’s hand. 

“I’d like to, Helen, but I’m used to things out 
here, and a change usually upsets my work very 
badly. I’ve got to dig in now for all I’m worth. 
Poky old hole? I thought you liked Greenacre.” 

“I don’t; I hate it. Oh, don’t start harping about 
‘the scenery;’ the scenery’s all right for a change, 
but I’m fed up on it. Outside of gawking around 
the coimtry, there’s nothing to do but get up, eat, 


24 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


and then go to bed again. I don’t know why we 
couldn’t go down to—well, Atlantic City, while 
you’re finishing the book.” 

“Oh, tut!” Gilmore reproved mildly. “You’ve just 
got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning. 
It’s quite impossible for us to go away. It won t be 
lonesome for you now that Joan is back. She’s 
no end of good fun, Joan. Greatest little pal in 
the world. And that reminds me that I must ask 
her to help me straighten out the sixteenth chapter. 
There’s a little something it lacks, and I can always 
depend on Joan to supply just the right touch.” 

Helen laughed, but not pleasantly. “Yes,” she 
said with an edge of sarcasm, “that stepsister of 
yours and I would make great pals—not! It’s all 
that she can do to be civil. Sometimes I feel that 
she actually hates me!” 

“That’s nonsense, Helen. Joan hate you? How 
ridiculous! Joan never hated any one in her life.” 

“It’s not ridiculous!” flared Helen; she was one 
of those persons who always flared when contra¬ 
dicted. She could not brook opposition, even verbal 
opposition. “I tell you. Miss Sheridan dislikes me 
intensely.” 

“She might be a little hurt—temporarily,” ad¬ 
mitted Gilmore. “I’m sorry we didn’t leave the 
room alone until she got back. Perhaps it doesn’t 
seem quite right, moving her out while she was 
away.” > 

“Every one in the house looks upon me as— 
as an interloper,” Helen rushed on. “Even the 
servants—I can feel their antagonism toward me. 
I don’t know why I should be asked to—^to tolerate 
such treatment.” 


THE SQUALID HOUSE 


25 


“Try and look at things more calmly,” soothed 
Gilmore. “Naturally, everything seems strange to 
you at first. Both my stepmother and Joan are won¬ 
derful, Helen—real mother and sister to me. You’ll 
learn to love them very much; please, Helen, for 
my sake, you’ll try.” 

“And you expect to let them make their home 
with us permanently?” she demanded bitterly. 

Kirklan Gilmore looked uncomfortable, unhappy; 
this was the first rift in the lute. He was dis¬ 
covering that his wife, after all, was not quite 
the perfect woman. It is a painful realization for 
a new husband. 

“W-well,” he said slowly, “I hadn’t thought of 
that. This has been my stepmother’s home for 
almost twenty years, and, while it belongs to me 
legally, I wouldn’t think for a moment of pitching 
her out.” He paused for a moment, and his tone 
had a touch of wistfulness in it. “It’s always been 
my home, too, Helen. To me there is no place 
quite like Greenacres; I—I wish you’d really try to 
be happy here.” 

Helen did not respond with that sympathetic un¬ 
derstanding he had hoped for, and Kirklan, of 
course, could not know that the receipt of the letter 
only a few minutes before had filled her with a 
desperate anxiety to flee from the thing that threat¬ 
ened her. 

“You—you won’t—take me away?” she persisted. 

“Helen, you don’t know how hard it is for me 
to deny you any wish. Heaven knows I want to 
make you happy, but can’t you understand that 
we’ve got to be practical? My studio is here; my 
library is here; and it’s here that I’ve always done 


26 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


my best work. At least wait until the book is 
finished, and then, if you still do not like Green¬ 
acres, we—we will see what we can do.” There 
was, despite his conciliatory tone, a note of firmness, 
and Helen, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, 
dismissed the subject temporarily. 

“You won’t go into town with me?” asked Gil¬ 
more. “It will be a change, and I think you’ll find 
it a pleasant trip in the car.” 

Helen thought swiftly and came to a decision. 
She did want to go to New York, but certainly 
not with her husband; she must forestall any 
effort of the unsigned sender of that letter to see 
her at Greenacres. The sooner the better. 

“Why don’t you use the train, Kirklan, and let 
me have the car?” she suggested. “I’d like to take 
the ferry across the river to Nyack and drive out 
toward Tuxedo.” 

Gilmore agreed promptly. “Suppose you take 
Joan along,” he suggested. “You can’t help liking 
her after the first strangeness wears off; really 
you’ve no idea what a perfect little brick she is.” 

Helen shook her head. “No,” she refused, “I’d 
rather be alone to-day.” And that much was true. 

Gilmore looked at his watch and moved toward 
his wife for a parting embrace; it was the first 
time he had left her, even for a trip to New 
York, and, madly in love with Helen as he was, 
the prospect was depressing. 

“You’ll be careful about driving,” he warned. 
“Stay on the country roads and out of the traffic; 
you’re still a bit new at it, you know. I’ve just 
time to get the ten-thirty train.” 

There was no thought in Helen’s mind, despite 


THE SQUALID HOUSE 27 

her decision to make a secret trip into the city, 
of risking the heavy and perilous traffic of New 
York. Her plan was to run the car across country 
to White Plains, and there hoard the Boston & 
Westchester interurban electric. In this way, she 
reasoned, she would avoid the Grand Central Sta¬ 
tion and the possibility of getting back on the same 
train with her husband. 

How the most cunning of plans go astray! 

After a reluctant leave-taking—reluctant on Kirk- 
lan’s part—^he went downstairs with the idea of 
getting Joan to drive him down to the station and 
bring the car home, but Joan was nowhere in evi¬ 
dence, so he had to call on Billings, who looked 
after the grounds and who could drive in an 
emergency. Billings was a silent, taciturn sort of 
fellow, and this silence suited Gilmore’s mood 
exactly. 

Helen’s attitude worried him; her discontent 
alarmed him. Suddenly it occurred to him that 
in the two days since Joan’s return he had seen 
his stepsister only at dinner and a few minutes 
afterward. Thinking it over, he wondered if Joan 
had been quite her usual, jolly self; if she had 
purposely avoided him. 

Gilmore felt guilty about taking Joan’s room, 
but it is hard to deny a wife of a few days, and 
Helen had actually demanded it. It never entered 
his mind that there might be some other reason, 
a deeper, more vital reason for Joan’s attitude— 
that she feared, until the first shock of it had 
passed, she might unwittingly let him see into her 
heart. He made up his mind that on his return 


28 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


he would have a talk with Joan and let her know 
how sorry he was about the room. 

A few minutes after Billings let him off at the 
station, the train rushed in from the north, and 
Gilmore got aboard. During the forty-five-min¬ 
ute run to New York he remained depressingly 
thoughtful. 

‘T guess, at that, it’s a bit dull for Helen at 
Greenacres—and will be even more dull when I’ve 
got to lock myself in with my work. I ought to 
have some company down, I suppose, to liven things 
up for her a bit. I’ll see who I can drum up for 
the next week-end.” 

This decision gave him a feeling of relief, as it 
automatically solved the problem of his wife’s 
discontent with rural life. 

Arriving at Grand Central Station, Gilmore took 
a taxi to the office of his publishers and, less than 
half an hour later, was in conference with Atchin- 
son regarding the unfinished novel. The latter was 
a dynamic sort of fellow, a voluble enthusiast, and 
their talk lengthened until it was past one o’clock. 
He had read the carbon copy of what had been 
written and felt that it promised to have a greater 
success than “Rogue’s Paradise.” 

“We’ve decided to try illustrations with this book 
of yours,” Atchinson was explaining. “I’ve selected 
Victor Sarbella to do the job. Sarbella draws 
splendid pictures—faces with life and character in 
them. He’s one of those intense fellows. Half 
Italian, you know, although his mother was an 
American. You’ve met him, of course?” 

Gilmore nodded. “Yes, I know Sarbella; in¬ 
teresting chap; and, say, that gives me an idea. 


THE SQUALID HOUSE 29 

I had been thinking of having some people down 
to Greenacres. Helen is finding it a bit lonesome. 
Wouldn’t it he a good idea to have Sarbella come 
out?” 

Atchinson beamed. “That’s fine! He can pick 
out some of the dramatic situations with you and 
get the spirit of your characters. He’s devilish 
slow in turning out work, and I don’t want to run 
any chances of spoiling the drawings by rushing 
him. Suppose we call him up right now and get 
that part of it settled.” 

Word became action, as the publisher reached 
for the telephone and asked the firm’s private 
switchboard operator in the outer office to get 
Victor Sarbella’s apartment for him. A few minutes 
I later the matter was arranged, and Atchinson 
glanced at his watch. 

“Phew!” he whistled. “Half past one, old man; 
we’d better hurry out and have a bite of lunch. 
Speaking of Italians, what do you say to one of 
those Italian feeds? I’m always digging up new 
places to eat and I’ve run across a splendid little 
restaurant, where the food’s uncommonly good even 
if the location is poor—in the upper Forties.” 

Kirklan Gilmore agreed indifferently. “Most any¬ 
thing will suit me,” he said. 

The two left the publishing-house building, and, 
Atchinson talking almost incessantly and not always 
to the point, they started out. 

“Suppose we leg it,” suggested Gilmore; “it may 
give me a little zest for lunch.” 

“I’m for that,” Atchinson said heartily; “it’s only 
a dozen blocks.” How many things hinge on trifles! 
As they neared Eighth Avenue, passing along this 


30 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


cheap and squalid street, which one found it hard 
to believe was so near to pretentious Broadway. 
Atchinson’s emphatic voice jarred to an abrupt 
stop, his hand caught at the novelist’s arm. 

“Hello!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that Mrs. Gilmore 
yonder?” 

“You mean my wife? Oh, that’s impossible. 
Where?” 

But his eyes had looked too late. The woman 
Atchinson had seen was gone, disappeared swiftly 
into one of those grimy, ugly entrances before he 
could so much as glimpse her. 

“I’d take my oath that was Mrs. Gilmore,” mut¬ 
tered the publisher, giving a puzzled stare at the 
sign across the way which announced, “Furnished 
Rooms. Rates $3 Weekly and Up.” Since Helen 
had worked in the publishing office for two months, 
he felt certain he had not been mistaken. 

“That’s ridiculous!” snorted the author. “She 
took the car and motored out to Tuxedo. Besides, 
what would Helen be doing in a neighborhood like 
this?” 

Atchinson, feeling very uncomfortable, was won¬ 
dering precisely the same thing. “Humph!” he 
grunted. “I must have been mistaken; yes, no 
doubt I was. Some one who looked like her.” 

But this was friendly diplomacy; he had got a 
square look, and he knew quite positively that he 
had not been mistaken. The woman who had hur¬ 
ried, almost furtively, into the cheap, unclean lodg¬ 
ing house was Kirklan Gilmore’s wife! 


CHAPTER III 


HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER 

r^NTIRELY unaware that she had been observed, 
^ Helen Gilmore slipped furtively into the dark, 
musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were 
those unpleasant odors which accumulate in a de¬ 
caying house, the smell that suggests neglect. 

The opening of the second door automatically 
set a bell ringing, an unpleasant jangling that 
caused the woman to start and compress her lips, 
shutting back the nervous gasp which rose in her 
throat. When she closed the door the ringing 
stopped. 

After a wait of a moment there came down the 
raggedly carpeted stairs a slovenly and haglike fe¬ 
male, with straggling hair of dirty gray and the 
shoulders of a professional wrestler in their mus¬ 
cular broadness. The face of the slattern was, until 
she reached the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows. 
At the sight of it Helen instinctively retreated a 
step; she had never seen such a terrible face, she 
thought. A pair of narrow red eyes looked her 
up and down with appraising, impudent curiosity. 

“Perhaps—perhaps Fve made a mistake,” Helen 
stammered. “I thought this was the right number; 
I—I wanted to see Don Haskins.” 

“You ain’t made no mistake,” came the response 
in a hoarse guttural. “He’s upstairs. He told me 
he was lookin’ fer comp’ny. Guess you’re the swell 
sister he was tellin’ me about.” 


32 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Y-yes,” Helen answered faintly^ 

“Go right on up, deary; it’s the thoid floor— 
the door at the end of the hall, the door with a 
busted panel, where the cops broke in. They 
thought, it bein’ locked, Terry Mooney was there, 
but he wasn’t.” Her voice broke into a peal of 
cackling mirth. “No, he wasn’t there; he was— 
somewheres else.” , 

Starting toward the stairs, Helen turned, one 
hand resting upon the ancient rail. 

“Then Don is wanted by—by the cops?” 

“Ask him,” grunted the woman with the gargoyle 
face; “ask him. I’ll say he is, deary.” 

Helen went tremulously up the stairs, stumbled 
about the dark hallway until she found the second 
flight, which was narrow and, if possible, dirtier 
than the first. Here the boards were loose and 
clattered noisily beneath her step. Reaching the 
third floor, a bit of sun struggled feebly through 
the dust-filmed skylight and fell slantwise across 
the door with the broken panel, now patched with 
some unpainted strips torn from a chance packing 
box. 

The occupant of the room had heard her approach 
—only a deaf man could have failed to be notified 
by the clatter of the loose stairway boards—for the 
door opened cautiously, and a haggard unshaven 
face looked out through a widening crack. A pair 
of thin lips twisted back into an unpleasant and 
gloating triumphant grin. 

“So—so you’ve come, have you?” the man rasped 
and laughed harshly. “I thought you would. ' I give 
you credit for havin’ that much sense. Real prompt, 
ain’t you? Only mailed the letter yesterday.” He 


HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER 


33 


moved back, making room for her to enter. His 
eyes, hard and glittering, followed her with a look 
of venomous hate that was at the same time one of 
admiration, as if her beauty stirred him. 

The room was small, dark, and unventilated, and 
there was the vile odor of soured liquor that mingled 
nauseatingly with the stench of stale tobacco smoke. 
There was a narrow, tousled bed, with the white 
paint long since peeled from the metal framework, 
a broken-backed chair upon which rested a bottle 
of homemade whisky, that the old hag downstairs 
sold for ten dollars the quart. 

“Why did you send for me, Don?” demanded 
Helen. She was plainly frightened. Looking at him 
she found it hard to believe that this haggard man 
was the same person she had first known as 
“Nifty Don.” Don had been handsome—once. 

Don Haskins placed the bottle on the floor and 
with a sarcastic courtesy waved her to the chair. 

“Be seated, Mrs. Haskins,” he sneered, and him¬ 
self occupied the edge of the bed. Helen shivered, 
her fingers working nervously. For a moment he 
sat there staring. 

“You still got the looks,” he muttered thickly. 
“I—I guess I ain’t ever goin’ to get over bein’ 
crazy about you, Helen—even—even when I’m hatin’ 
you. His grimy hand reached out to her; his 
touch might have been tender, but at her shud¬ 
dering recoil his eyes blazed again, and his fingers 
crushed about her white wrist until she gave a 
cry of pain. 

“You always did think you was too good for 
your own kind,” he snarled. “Now that I’ve got 
you where I can put on the screws, I ought to get 


34 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


you sent up; that’s what I ought to do with you. 
After what you done to me-” 

“Fve done nothing to you, Don. Why did you 
send for me? You told that woman downstairs 
that I am-” 

“Yeah, it was a good stall, tollin’ ‘Eighth Avenue 
Annie’ that I gotta rich sister that would put up 
for me. See? Thirty bucks a week I gotta give the 
grafter for hidin’ me away in this room, and ten 
dollars a bottle for this rat poison she calls whisky. 
I owe her a hundred now, and she won’t let me 
skip until I pay up. If I don’t pay—^well, Annie 
fixes that by givin’ the bulls a tip where I can be 
located. See? That’s why I sent for you—to take 
me outta hock.” He grinned sardonically. “When 
a guy’s in trouble, ain’t it the most natural thing 
in the world that he turns to—^to his wife.” 

Helen shivered. “I’m not your wife!” she cried. 
“You know I’m not. I’ve never been your wife!” 

“The law says different,” retorted Don Haskins. 
“You married me, didn’t you?” 

“Yes,” Helen admitted bitterly, “I married you. 
I liked you, and when you got into that trouble I 
—I thought I loved you. It was only pity. You 
rushed me into it so that I wouldn’t have to 
testify against you—a wife can’t be made to testify 
against her husband. I knew, before you got out 
of the Tombs, that I’d made a mistake.” 

This revival of old and bitter memories convulsed 
Don Haskins’ face with anger. 

“You lie!” he gritted. “When y’ say I married 
you just to keep outta stir, you lie. I married you 
because I was crazy about you. You liked me, too, 
until—until you run into that other bird and fell 





HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER 


35 


for him. But when I got outta the Tomhs I stopped 
that, all right.” 

“Yes, you stopped it,” choked Helen. “I loved 
him—with every beat of my heart. You—^you 
robbed me of my one chance to he happy. You— 
oh, why do you drag all these ghosts before 
me? Those are things Fm always trying to forget. 
I saved you from doing a twenty-year stretch, and 
you’ve been hounding me—^hounding me ever since. 
That—that’s your idea of gratitude!” 

“Aw, cut out that stuff. Fm desperate. The cops 
is lookin’ for me; I gotta make a get-away and I 
gotta have money.” 

“Oh, I see, you want money,” nodded Helen, 
fumbling at her purse. “You said a hundred dol¬ 
lars-” 

Don Haskins gave a contemptuous sneer. 

“I said that’s what I owe Annie, hut I want 
more’n that—a lot more. Aw, I know you’re well 
fixed. I know you married a guy that’s got it. 
I got all the dope on you, see.” 

“How-” 

“You thought you were pretty foxy, didn’tcha? 
It wasn’t much trouble gettin’ a line on you. When 
I went out West with Keegan and got nabbed 
pullin’ the job we went out there to do in Chi, 
you thought I was in for a long stretch, and that 
you’d lose me. You changed your name, did the 
workin’-girl stunt, and hooked a live one—^married 
a fellow that writes, Kirklan Gilmore. 

“But the State’s attorney out there made a little 
deal with me; I handed him some information he 
wanted, and he got me paroled. See? I come 




36 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


back, lookin’ for you. Madge knew all about it, 
and I made her tell. Never trust a friend, girlie; 
that’s my motto.” 

“So Madge told you?” 

“She hadda tell; I’d have choked the life outta 
her if she hadn’t.” 

“I—I suppose the past is one thing that never 
dies,” Helen whispered. “I was a fool to think 
I could get away with it. I—I was a fool to take 
the chance.” 

“I ain’t gonna stop you from gettin’ away with 
it,” grunted Don; “at least I ain’t—providin’-” 

“Don’t beat around the bush, Don; get to the 
point. Providing—what?” 

“I’ll get to the point fast enough. I gotta be 
practical, I oughtta make you squirm, but I’m 
in a bad fix. What I need is a thousand bucks, 
and I need it quick.” 

Helen stared at him fixedly. 

“I haven’t got a thousand dollars, Don, but 

if two hundred will help any-” Her fingers 

were at the clasp of her hand bag. 

“If you ain’t got a thousand, then get it— 
from that rich husband you’ve swung onto.” 

“But he’s not rich. You don’t understand. He 
owns a house, an automobile, and lives well, but 
he’s not rich. I doubt if he’s got much money* 
outside the royalties from his book. I—I don’t 
see how I could ask him for a thousand dollars, 
without giving him some sort of an explanation, 
and I don’t know what I could tell him.” 

“He ain’t rich?” Don broke in skeptically. “Say, 
whatcha tryin’ to hand me? If he ain’t rich. 




HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER 


37 


whatcha marry him for—and risk doin’ a trip 
for bigamy? Stuck on the guy, huh?” 

Helen shook her head. 

“N-no,” she faltered. “I’m not ‘stuck* on him. 
I wish to Heaven that I hadn’t married him— 
now.” Her lips twitched. “I—I suppose it looked 
like a chance to be respectable. I heard that you 
were in trouble out in Chicago, that you’d been 
put away for a long time. I took up typewriting 
after Tilliston’s cabaret closed; I changed my name 
and got a job with a publishing house.” 

“Yeah, I got all that from Madge.” 

“Oh, what’s the use going into the rest of it? 
I don’t like to work; I never did. I met Gilmore. 
He was wild about me—still is. It seemed like 
such a wonderful chance, the wife of a famous 
novelist. I wonder what he’ll do if he ever learns 
the truth? Perhaps—perhaps—She’ll kill me!” 

“Aw, can that stuff,” growled Don Haskins. 
“Conversation don’t help me any; what I want is 
that thousand bucks—quick. I’m due for a long 
trip up the river—or worse—if I don’t jmnp town 
before the bulls nail me. 

“I was in on a loft job. It was a water haul— 
not a ten-dollar bit between the three of us that 
was in on it. One of the birds got nabbed, and^ 
I know he’s got a yellow streak in ’im as wide 
as Fifth Avenue. The cops won’t have to more’n 
bounce a nightstick over his head when he’ll come 
through with a squeal. I gotta get outta town, 
put distance behind me, because”—^his voice sank 
to a low, hoarse whisper—“because the watchman 
got croaked, see! It—it’s a chance of the chair, 
if ‘Dago Mike’ squeals on the other two of us. 


38 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“A guy ain’t got no chance doin’ a slide outta 
town these days unless he’s well heeled. I’m 
flat broke. Do I get that thousand from you, 
or- 

“Say it, Don.” 

The man’s eyes were narrowed. 

“Or do I drop a note to Gilmore, tellin’ him 
that his wife’s got two husbands, that if he’ll 
taxi over to Borough Hall in Brooklyn and look 
over the marriage-license records for October tenth, 
nineteen sixteen-” 

“You—you wouldn’t do that to me, Don?” Helen’s 
face was deathly white. “You ungrateful rat-” 

“If I’m a rat, then it was you made me a rat!” 
gritted the man. “When I got outta the Tombs 
that time and found you’d thro wed me over, and 
was trailin’ around with that swell with the 
Eyetalian name, it made a bum outta me. If I 

could have got my hands on you that first night-” 

His hands darted toward her, extended fingers 
twitching convulsively, as they neared her throat. 
With a stifiled scream Helen protected herself with 
her arms. 

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t look at me like that. 
I’ll try to get the thousand dollars, but I don’t 
know what—what I will tell him.” 

“It’s up to you what kind of a song and dance 
you give ’im,” he growled. “The big thing is— 

get it. It’s that, or else- Now pass over that 

two hundred you was talkin’ about; that’ll help 
a little.” 

Helen’s fingers trembled as she reached into her 
hand bag for the roll of bills. “Even if I give you 
the thousand dollars, I suppose I’ll always be at 





HELEN ANSWERS HER LETTER 


39 


your mercy—that you’ll always be coming back for 
more, that you’ll hound me, blackmail me-” 

Haskins made no promises as to that; he grabbed 
the money avidly from her hand and counted it 
eagerly. Ten dollars lacking two hundred. 

“When do I get the rest of it?” he demanded. 
‘T can’t wait long; it won’t be safe—stayin’ here 
with Eighth Avenue Annie.” 

Helen considered swiftly. “This—^this is Mon¬ 
day,” she said. “I may be able to get it by 
Wednesday. If I can get it at all I suppose I 
can get it by then. You—^you’ll give me until 
Wednesday?” 

“Ain’t got no jewelry that you can put in soak 
to raise the jack?” Don wanted to know. 

“He—^he would miss that, what little there is. 
I’d better try to get the money from him—if 
I can.” 

Haskins’ lips twisted unpleasantly. “You better,” 
he grunted threateningly. “Aw right, I’m givin’ 
you until Wednesday, hut if you ain’t come across 
with it by then. I’ll saunter out to that swell 
place I hear you’re livin’ in—and collect.” 


\ 



CHAPTER IV 
“what does it mean?” 

R eturning from New York on the five o’clock 
train, Kirklan Gilmore stood for a minute 
or so on the station platform, looking along the 
assembled line of cars in which thoughtful wives 
were meeting their city-working husbands. He 
felt disappointed and hurt that Helen had not 
come for him, especially as this was his first 
absence. 

Then it occurred to him that she might not 
have returned from her drive across the river; 
the country roads might have lured her farther 
than her announced destination of Tuxedo. A 
worried frown appeared over his eyes, as his 
imagination led him to take the unpleasant possi¬ 
bility that, since Helen was new at the steering* 
wheel, there might have been an accident. A 
horrifying picture of a collision, his beautiful 
wife maimed, cut, bleeding, arose before him, but 
he brushed it aside with a shudder. 

“I suppose all doting husbands do a lot of 
unnecessary worrying,” he told himself. “I couldn’t 
stand losing her.” 

Gilmore did not for a moment believe that it 
had been Helen whom Atchinson had seen on the 
street in New York; he considered it a bit of a 
joke on the publisher and intended having a good 
laugh by teasing his wife about her “double.” 
The village of Ardleigh is small, and, since it 


“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” 


41 


is surrounded with people owning their country 
homes and their own cars, there is small demand 
for taxicab service. There were just three of 
the ramshackle vehicles, but Gilmore delayed so 
long that the last one was occupied and started 
in motion, as he crossed the platform toward it. 

Except that it might delay him getting to Helen, 
he felt no annoyance over this incident; it was 
only two miles from the village to Greenacres, 
and he often made the trip on foot by choice. 
It was a splendid, picturesque walk, which to 
him had never lost its charm. 

Carrying his manuscript case of black leather, 
he swung off briskly, choosing the dirt road rather 
than the paved highway; this not only afforded 
the more scenic view, but also saved him nearly 
a quarter of a mile. He was in a hurry for, 
try as he would, he could not help being rather 
anxious about Helen and her safe return. 

The road ran along the backbone of a ridge, 
so that, while still some distance from the house, 
he was able to get a glimpse of the driveway 
through an opening in the trees, and he gave a 
breath of relief as he saw the car. His anxiety 
had been quite unfounded; his wife was home. 

Approaching the house itself, he saw Joan on 
the lawn teaching tricks to the new collie pup, 
and she was so engrossed with the task that she 
failed to hear the crunch of his shoes on the 
gravel. 

“Hello, Joan!” he called cheerily. 

The girl, on her knees in the grass, dropped 
the puppy’s paws and turned half toward him. 


42 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


the drooping brim of her hat shielding whatever 
expression may have been in her dark eyes. 

“Hello, Kirk,” she answered, getting to her feet. 

“I see Helen’s got home. I was just a little 
worried about her—she being new about driving 
the car.” 

“Yes, she’s home,” nodded Joan. “She drove 
in about five minutes ago; I think you’ll find her 
dressing for dinner.” She essayed a brief and 
fairly successful laugh. “I won’t keep you, Kirk; 
I know you’ll be anxious to see her after being] 
away from her all these hours.” 

Gilmore hesitated for a moment. “See here, 
Joan,” he protested, “I believe you’re trying to 
get away from me. Somehow I’ve got the feeling 
that you’ve been trying to avoid me ever since 
you got back from your trip. You haven’t told 
me a thing about it.” 

“I—I didn’t think you’d want to be bothered; 
all your time belongs to Helen. I’ve thanked you 
for the glorious treat, haven’t I? I know I in¬ 
tended to.” 

“There are no thanks due, Joan; you earned 
it—and more. Atchinson was speaking of some 
passages in ‘Rogue’s Paradise’ only to-day, and, 
bless your life, most of them were yours!” 

“It’s nice of you to say that, Kirk,” she mur¬ 
mured lifelessly; he would never know—^must never 
know—^what a labor of love it had been. There 
was an uncomfortable pause, during which Gilmore 
fumbled at his watch chain, and Joan bent over 
to pull gently at the puppy’s ears. 

“I guess there’s something else I ought to say,” 
he floundered. “I feel mighty guilty about Helen 


“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” 


43 


taking your room. I don’t blame you for being 
hurt about it. I did my best to make her under¬ 
stand, but-” 

“We’ll not talk about that, Kirk. The house 
belongs to you; it was quite within your right. 
I’ll get accustomed to my new quarters, and it 
will be all right, Kirk—quite all right.” 

It was strange that Gilmore, whose books were 
considered to contain keen analysis of the human 
emotions, should have missed the catch in her 
voice, the touch of pathos, as she tried to mask 
her true feelings with a careless, matter-of-fact 
tone. But miss them he did, and he felt relieved 
that she was being such a good sport about it. 

“It’s like you, Joan,” he said warmly, “to take 
it like that, and I wish you’d try and make things 
as pleasant as you can for Helen. She still 
feels strange, and, I suppose, is overly sensitive. 
This is just between you and me, understand, but 
she has a notion that there is a feeling of an¬ 
tagonism, even among the servants, toward her. 
Of course that’s ridiculous; no one could help 
loving Helen. She is wonderful, isn’t she?” 

Joan could not force the polite falsehood to 
her lips, but Gilmore rushed on, taking no cog¬ 
nizance of her silence. 

“I’ve been honeymooning for the past three weeks, 
Joan, but I’ve got to get back into harness again 
—a very good simile, since my studio is a reno¬ 
vated stable—and rush the book to a finish. I’ve 
got to lock myself in and work. 

“Well, I’m afraid Helen is going to get pretty 
lonesome unless some one looks after entertaining 
her a bit. Atchinson has arranged with Victor 



THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Sarbella—^you remember meeting Sarbella in town, 
of course—to draw the illustrations for my coming 
book, and he’ll be out to-morrow for a stay of 
several days. He’ll have time for loafing, while 
I’m working, and I wish you’d see to it that 
things are made as jolly as possible for Helen. 

“It’s partly selfishness that I don’t want country 
life to pall on Helen; I’ve got to make her con¬ 
tented with Greenacres, or she’ll be pulling me 
away from the old place and into town.” 

Joan’s lips tightened. Kirk did not know, of 
course, how much he was asking of dier. “You’d 
better be getting in to Helen,” she said. 

And when Gilmore had gone, striding swiftly 
to the house, Joan Sheridan dropped to her knees 
in the grass, hugging the collie pup close, the 
one living thing she would have permitted to see 
the tears now flooding her dark eyes. 

“Oh, Laddie, boy,” she whispered into one of 
the inquiringly cocked ears, “it’s so hard to pre¬ 
tend—so hard! Oh, how I hate that woman—- 
how I hate her! I didn’t know there was so 
much hate in me.” 

Kirklan Gilmore entered the house and went 
directly upstairs. A moment later he was rapping 
at the door of his wife’s room and, after her 
muffled response from the other side of the panel, 
he went in. 

Helen was not, as he expected, dressing for 
dinner. She sat by the window in a listless, 
preoccupied attitude, and she had noj. so much 
as removed her hat. Her greeting was not that 
spontaneous explosion of welcoming joy that he 


“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” 45 

would have liked after their first parting, even 
of the brief hours. 

“Hello, Kirklan,” she said listlessly. “How’s 
everything in New York? Hot, wasn’t it?” 

Gilmore kissed her eagerly, but found her even 
more than usually unresponsive. 

“Not so hot,” he answered, “but the humidity 
was’ stifling. What’s wrong, Helen? You look 
all out of sorts.” 

“Just tired, I suppose,” she said. “Driving a 
car is a strain on the nerves.” 

“Yes, it is for a beginner; you shouldn’t attempt 
such long trips until you’re more accustomed to 
the wheel. Have any trouble?” 

“I Stalled the motor on a hill, but I just put 
on the emergency brake and worked the starter. 
That’s what you told me to do in a case like 
that.” 

“Good headwork, Helen. The truth is, I’d 
worried about you a good deal. If anything 

had happened to you, my darling-” His voice 

choked, husky with emotion, and he put his fingers 
softly to a strand of bronze hair that had broken 
prison from under the edge of her hat. 

When a man is in a soft mood, that is the 
best time for a wife to ask what she wants. 
Helen realized this and decided not to delay the 
matter of the needed thousand dollars. So she 
reached up and let her hand close about his. 

“Kirklan,” she said, “I—I am worried about 
something. I am ashamed to come to you with 
it, but-” 

A look of alarm came into Gilmore’s face, as 
he waited for her to continue. 




46 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Oh, Kirklan, I—I am so—so ashamed. It’s 
money.” 

He gave a quick, relieved laugh. “And it 
hurts your pride to ask your husband for a little 
shopping money. Since you feel that way about 
it, I suppose we’d better decide on a regular 
allowance. No doubt you’d like to have your 
own little hank account. I’ll be as generous with 
you as I can, dear, but, as I told you before 
we were married. I’m no bloated capitalist. The 
royalties from the last book are coming in pretty 
regularly now, although we hope they’ll be even 
larger. The sales seem to be growing. Did you 
have your mind set on any particular amount? 
Don’t be timid about it, honey; if it’s more than 
I can stand I’ll have to tell you so.” 

“There—^there are so many things I need, Kirk¬ 
lan; sometimes a man doesn’t understand about 
a woman’s wardrobe. I’ve been afraid you would 
think I am extravagant, and I don’t want to be 
a burden on you.” It had been in her mind to 
manufacture some past debt, but his suggestion 
of an allowance seemed to make it easier. 

“How much do you want, Helen. You fix 
the amount, and, if I’ve got it, it’s yours.” Then, 
as she still seemed to hesitate, he suggested a 
figure that to his mind was generous. “Suppose 
I deposit five hundred in the village bank to 
start with? By the time you’ve checked against 
that. I’ll have some more money coming in.” 

“I—I’d like to have a thousand dollars, Kirklan. 
Does that seem a great deal? Of course I won’t 
have to ask you for any more for—oh, for quite 
a long time.” 


“WHAT DOES IT MEAN?” 


47 


Gilmore was not displeased with her, but he 
was chagrined, for the reason that his own bank 
balance was three hundred dollars less than the 
thousand. 

“Store accounts, of course!” he said. “I’ve 
charge accounts at several of the stores in New 
York, and you can buy what you want and charge 
it to me. The truth is, dear, that I haven’t got 
a thousand in cash. We writer fellows aren’t 
very good financiers and I’ve been living pretty 
close to the last dollar. But my credit is good.” 

Helen bit her lip. “I’d rather not charge things, 
Kirklan. If it would be just as convenient to 

let me have the cash-” 

“I’ll let you have it Friday,” he agreed; “I’ll 
drop a note to Atchinson and ask him to make 
me an advance. The publishing house makes 
out its checks on Thursday.” 

“Kirklan,” she murmured, forced to try a new 
line, “I’ll have to tell you the truth. I’ll have 
to have some money by Wednesday. Oh, I know 
it’s terrible, asking you to pay my old debts, 

but I’m so afraid of—of being sued that I-” 

Gilmore patted her shoulder reassuringly. Had 
he stopped to think about it, he might have con¬ 
sidered it strange that a girl in the humble position 
in which he had found her should have got into 
debt to the extent of a thousand dollars, but 
it was Helen, not he, who recognized this possible 
inconsistency, and she hastened to add with that 
glibness which even a poor liar may achieve in 
a moment of desperation: “It—it was money that 
I borrowed for my sister’s illness. I had to sign 
some notes, and-” 


48 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“You shall have the money, Helen, but the 
truth is always the best in the first place, dear. 
I want us always to be frank with each other. 
I want you to feel that you can come to me 
with everything. After all, a falsehood is the 
most futile thing in the world. You should have 
told me the exact truth about the matter from 
the beginning. Fll get in touch with Atchinson 
on the phone to-morrow and arrange it. You 
shall have the money to-morrow night, but you 
must never lie to me, dear—under any conditions. 
A lie is one of the things I find it hard to 
forgive.” 

His tone was so gentle, his agreement to the 
request so prompt, and his faith in her so un¬ 
questioning that Helen was touched. It made 
her think thaf she might almost learn to love 
him; impulsively she brushed her lips to the back 
of his hand. 

“That’s good of you, Kirklan; you—^you’ll never 
know what a weight you’ve taken from my mind. 
You—you do love me a very great deal.” 

“Better than all else in the world, Helen!” he 
answered huskily. 

There was a silence, to Gilmore an enraptured 
silence in which he felt closer to his wife than 
ever before. It seemed that suddenly there was 
a new bond between them. 

“What does Atchinson think of the new book?” 
she asked him presently. “Does he think it will 
have the success of the last one?” 

“Yes, even more. He’s enthusiastic—even for 
Atchinson.” His lips parted into a smile. “Speak¬ 
ing of Atchinson, that reminds me. He was trying 


“WHAT DOES IT MEANT 


49 


to convince me that he saw you in New York 
this afternoon—going into some cheap dump just 
around the corner from Eighth Avenue.” 

With a startled gasp, Helen’s hand jerked away 
from the fondling caress of his fingers and, 
clenched, went to her mouth. Her eyes became 
wide with something that was more than either 
surprise and bewilderment. Her gaze was fixed 
upon his face with a fascinated stare, and the 
smile that she attempted was only a sickly grimace. 

“Why, Kirklan! In—in New York? How silly! 
You know very well that I drove the car to 
Tuxedo.” 

Kirklan Gilmore’s blood was suddenly ice; his 
eyes were no longer smiling. 

“Great Lord!” he whispered. “It’s true. Atchin- 
son was right. Helen, you’ve lied to me; you- 

“No!” she cried in a desperate frenzy of denial. 
“I swear to you- 

“I see guilt in your face. I know now; I know 
that you were the woman Atchinson saw in New 
York this afternoon. What does it mean, Helen? 
These lies, this deceit—^what does it mean?” 

Helen laughed hysterically. 

“Don’t—don’t be so tragic—over nothing. I 
wasn’t in New York; you just startled me, that’s 
all. Please don’t be so silly. Atchinson was 
mistaken; some one who looked like me, perhaps.” 

But, as much as he wanted to believe her, Kirklan 
Gilmore could not convince himself; her face 
had betrayed her. The blood was pounding in 
his brain, and he felt that the mystery of it, th& 
doubts, the suspicions would certainly drive him 
mad. 



CHAPTER V 


VICTOR SARBELLA 

T he next morning, after a sleepless night, found 
Gilmore haggard and hollow-eyed. There 
were moments when his wife’s persistent denials 
almost convinced him that it was all a horrible 
mistake; for a beautiful woman in tears can be 
most plausible at dissimulation; and then, when 
trying hardest to believe her, there would come 
before him, with photographic clearness, the mem¬ 
ory of her startled face, the sudden guilty terror 
in her eyes, and credulity would crumble. 

He was up hours before the rest of the house¬ 
hold, although the cook was stirring and brewed 
him a cup of coffee, which he gulped mechanically 
and then fled to the solitude of his studio, thinking 
that he might relieve the tension by forgetting 
himself in his work. 

That, of course was ridiculous; there was no 
possibility of mental detachment with his brain 
in such a riotous tumult. Sheet after sheet of 
paper he drew before him to receive his thoughts, 
but, instead of smooth sentences flowing from his 
pen, he found himself tracing meaningless lines. 
He gave up any attempt at creation and tried 
correcting, ironing out rough spots in the manu¬ 
script, where he had left off three weeks previous, 
but in his present frame of mind all spots were 
rough, just jumbled words. He tossed down 
his pen with a violent force that crumpled the 


VICTOR SARBELLA 


51 


gold point and sent a spray of ink spattering 
across the desk top. Then he leaped to his feet 
and began to pace the floor like a caged beast. 

“Fve got to know the truth?” he groaned. “I 
think I could make myself forgive her anything, 
but the deceit of it is driving me mad! What 
could have taken her to that place—^what is she 
hiding from me? Her reason for wanting the 
thousand dollars—perhaps, that too, was a lie.” 

It suddenly dawned upon him how little he 
knew of Helen’s life; nothing more than she had 
been pleased to tell him, and that had not been 
much. She had seldom spoken of her family, 
and then only in a hazy, unenlightening sort 
of way. He had rather got the impression that 
her parents had died when she was a child, and 
that a shadowy, indefinite aunt had reared her. 

Gilmore’s love for his wife had been so blindly 
intense, so headlong that it had never occurred 
to him to weigh these things. He had loved her 
for herself, and that had been sufficient. 

Until long past noon he remained locked within 
the studio, and no one came to disturb him. 
At last he could no longer endure the oppression 
of four walls; the day was hot, and he had 
neglected to open the windows; the air was stifling. 
So he flung himself out of the renovated stable) 
and plunged, with hardly any sense of direction, 
across the open country—^trying to think, trying 
to think 1 

Thus he missed the arrival of Victor Sarbella, 
his artist guest; in fact he had forgotten that 
Sarbella was coming. It was a quarter past four 
when one of the village taxis turned in at Green- 


52 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


acres, nosed along the driveway and, coming to 
a stop beneath the portico, deposited Victor Sar- 
bella and his bags beside the long, cool porch. 

One did not need to hear the name to be 
certain of Sarbella’s Italian blood, for from his 
Florentine father he had got the intense black 
eyes and the tinting of skin which belong to 
that warm-blooded race. He was a handsome, 
powerfully built man, nearing forty. His hands, 
as he paid the driver, were revealed as long¬ 
fingered, tapering, such hands as properly belong 
to the artist. 

With a honk of the horn the taxi moved off, 
and Victor Sarbella looked about him, his black 
eyes snapping with an appreciative light. The 
artist in him was delighted with the charm of 
Greenacres. 

“My friend,” he mused, “has a most beautiful 
home; a beautiful wife, too, I am told.” 

Attracted by the taxi’s arrival. Bates, the butler, 
shambled out across the porch, followed by Joan 
Sheridan. Joan had met him at a literary affair 
in New York the previous winter, and of course 
she remembered him; Victor Sarbella was not 
the kind of man that one found it possible to 
forget. She met him with an outstretched hand. 

“Welcome to Greenacres, Mr. Sarbella. Kirk 
told me last night that you were coming. I 
haven’t seen Kirk all morning, but I suppose he’s 
at the studio. Have you seen him. Bates?” 

“Not all day, Miss Joan; as you say, perhaps 
the studio.” 

Joan nodded. “I’ll find him, Bates, while you 
take in Mr. Sarbella’s bags. He loses all track 


VICTOR SARBELLA 53 

of time when he really gets to work, and he’s 
got to make up for three lost weeks.” 

“Naturally my poor friend takes up hees pen 
like, as they say, a slave scourged to hees dun¬ 
geon,” he laughed. While he had spent a good 
many years in America with his mother who, 
following the death of his Italian father, had 
taken up residence in New York, there was a 
touch of foreign accent in the pronunciation of 
certain words. His education had been in Florence, 
and each winter he returned there for two or 
three months. “Tell me, Mees Sheridan, is hees 
new wife so beautiful as I have been told?” 

Joan nodded. “Yes, she is beautiful, a very 
beautiful woman. Now I’ll run and find Kirk. 
He’ll feel much humiliated that he wasn’t here 
to greet you. You’re to make the illustrations 
for the new book. That’s wonderful. I’ve always 
admired your drawings; there’s such intensity in 
your pictures.” 

Sarbella, bowing, murmured an acknowledgment 
of the compliment and turned to follow the butler 
into the house and up the stairs to the second 
floor. A few minutes later he was unpacking 
his bags, as Bates drew a tub of water for him. 

“What time is dinner. Bates?” 

“A quarter past six, Mr. Sarbella.” 

“It is now nearly half past four,” said the artist, 
glancing at his watch. “Every one dresses for 
dinner, I suppose.” 

“Oh, certainly, sir.” 

“Then I wish you would press my dinner coat. 
Bates; it’s badly wrinkled. I was never good 
at packing. You may tell Meester Gilmore that 


54 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


I will not come down until six. There’s no 
sense in dressing twice.” 

“Quite so,” nodded Bates and, accepting the 
dinner coat, shuffled out of the room. 

Sarbella took a brief plunge in the tub of 
tepid water, finished it off with an invigorating 
cold shower, and, slipping into a light bath robe, 
pulled a chair to the window and began to smoke. 
His thoughts evidently took an unpleasant turn, 
for his eyes glowed hotly, and his muscles tensed 
until his fingers crushed the burning cigarette, 
and the fiery end of it smoldered odorously in 
the nap of the rug at his feet. 

“To-day is the ninth,” he smiled, half aloud; 
“day after to-morrow would have been hees twenty- 
third birthday—Andrea’s twenty-third birthday! If 
I could but find her, that woman, I would kill 
her with my own hands 1 Heaven curse her 1 
She-” 

The tense soliloquy of hate was interrupted 
by a rap at the door; Sarbella turned with a start 
and called, “Yes, come.” 

Kirklan Gilmore, face still haggard, his eyes 
bloodshot, entered the room with tumbling words 
of apology. 

“Can you forgive my discourtesy, Victor?” he 
exclaimed. “I should have been here to receive 
you. A fine host you must think me when-^”| 

“Poof! That for your discourtesy, my good 
friend!” broke in Sarbella with a laugh and a 
snap of the fingers. “We are artists, you and 
I; you are an artist of the pen, and I an artist 
of the brush. So we understand each other. I 
think nothing of it. But, my friend, what has 



VICTOR SARBELLA 55 

happened to you? Your face is that of a man 
Who is ill.” 

Gilmore gave a jerky laugh. “It’s nothing, 
Victor—nothing. Poor night’s sleep, that’s all.” 
While their friendship was a warm one, it had 
never reached the point of. intimacy; and to no 
friend on earth would Kirklan Gilmore have con¬ 
fided the truth. “We’ll have a cocktail or so 
before dinner, and that will put new life hack 
into me again.” 

Sarbella felt certain that this was an evasion 
and a very thin one; through Gilmore’s eyes he 
saw a soul in torment. But he pretended to 
accept the explanation. 

“The beautiful new wife, she must, not see 
you so. It will make her unhappy.” 

Gilmore’s lips tightened, and he hastily changed 
the subject. “To-morrow, Victor, we’ll dig in 
and talk over the illustrations you are to make. 
I have an idea or so, but I’ll have to chase along 
now and dress for dinner. Did Bates tell you? 
A quarter past six? When you’ve dressed go on 
downstairs; we’ll have the cocktails on the ve¬ 
randa. I’ll be down ahead of you, perhaps; I’m 
a regular fireman for throwing on my clothes.” 

And he bolted abruptly from the room. Victor 
Sarbella stared after the closed door and shook 
his head slowly. 

“All!” he murmured. “A poor night’s sleep, 
he says. I fear it is nothing so simply remedied 
as that. It was tragedy I saw in his face— 
tragedy. We all have our tragedies; I, too, have 
had mine. Poor Andrea; he was so young to 
die. And our mother-” He blinked back 


56 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


the moisture which flooded his eyes and tossed 
off the hath robe of silk crape, starting to get 
into his clothes. Before he had finished, the 
butler returned with the freshly pressed dinner 
coat, uttered a few polite banalities, and departed. 

Sarbella smoked another cigarette and then went 
downstairs to the veranda, where he found that 
Gilmore had preceded him, looking a little less 
pale than some minutes before. But the color 
in the author’s cheeks was plainly artificial, in¬ 
duced no doubt by a nip or so from the bottle 
of liquor with which he was engaged in mixing 
the cocktails. The man was making a supreme 
effort to conceal the true state of his feelings, 
and being only moderately successful at it. 

“The ladies will be down in a moment,” said 
Gilmore, moving the cocktail shaker back and 
forth. “Joan tells me that she saw you when 
you arrived. Great admirer of your work, Joan; 
she’s tickled to death that you’re going to do 
the drawings for the book. She’ll probably help 
you pick out some of the dramatic high spots; 
she knows the manuscript forward and backward. 
Here’s my mother now; I hear her coming through 
the hall.” 

Victor Sarbella turned to greet Mrs. Gilmore, 
Kirklan’s stepmother, whom he had not met before. 

“Mother, this is Mr. Sarbella. Further intro¬ 
ductions are unnecessary, Victor, because she’s heard 
all about you.” 

As Sarbella bowed over her hand, Joan joined 
them. 

“I think you can fill the glasses, Kirk,” she 
said with a glance at the tray. “Helen was 


VICTOR SARBELLA 


57 


directly behind me, as I came down the stairs. 
You know, Mr. Sarbella, we’re terribly punctual 
about dinner. The way the servants do discipline 
us these days!” 

The screen door onto the porch opened again, 
and Helen Gilmore came out quietly, almost list¬ 
lessly. 

Kirklan was filling the last glass. “Victor, I 
want you to meet my wife; Helen, this is Mr. 
Sarbella—the artist, you know,” he said. “Perhaps 
I neglected to tell you that he was expected.” 

There was a pause. 

The polite, formal smile on the artist’s lips 
was washed away by a tidal wave of emotion— 
surprise, incredulity, horror—^which left his face 
white and rigid; into his eyes there blazed a 
scorching fire of hatred that, since his back was 
toward the others, was seen only by Helen. 

At mention of his name Helen had stopped, 
her own features ghastly; but she quickly checked 
the startled gasp which rose in her white throat 
and, by the most tremendous effort, managed to 
control herself. However, her agitation escaped 
neither her husband nor Joan; both of them sensed 
what a dramatic shock the meeting had been 
to her. 

Sarhella mastered his emotions wonderfully, and 
he came of a race that is essentially emotional. 
And while he could not hide the pallor of his 
face, he did mask that first flash of hatred which 
had blazed in his eyes. Yet he dared not trust 
his tongue. Silently he bowed. 

Kirklan Gilmore’s unsteady hand splashed the 
last cocktail all over the tray. 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Perhaps—perhaps you’ve—^met before?” he sug¬ 
gested, alarmed by what was obviously an attempt 
to conceal a mutual recognition. 

“No,” answered Victor Sarbella, his voice husky 
despite himself, “Mrs. Gilmore and I have never 
met until this moment. It is a circumstance 
that I very much regret.” 

“Mr. Sarbella,” said Helen, an almost hysterical 
catch in her voice, “is a total stranger. The 
name startled me. It is such an unusual name, 
and I once had a—a friend who-” 

“Dinner is served!” announced Bates. He said 
it quietly enough, but it was like a thunder¬ 
clap, this interruption. 

“Here’s how!” cried Joan, picking up her cocktail 
glass. “You’ll go a long way before you find 
anything like this, Mr. Sarbella; it’s some of 
the old stock that Kirk’s father had in the cellar— 
oh, years and years ago.” It served to break 
the tension. “Here’s to the new book—^may it 
be a tremendous success!” 

“Great gods!” Sarbella said under his breath, 
as he mechanically lifted his glass. “It is she— 
the woman! I find her here, the wife of—of 
my friend. Merciful Heaven, his wife!” 



CHAPTER VI 


IN THE STUDIO 

T here can be nothing so dismal as pretended 
gayety, nothing so mirthless as hoHSw, empty 
laughter. After that startling encounter between 
Victor Sarbella and Helen Gilmore, both of them 
fighting for self-control, all five on the porch drank 
the toast that Joan had offered in an attempt 
to save the situation. Joan, of course, could not 
know what it was all about, but she sensed the 
ominous trend of things. She had seen the look 
of frozen terror in Helen’s face, had seen the 
muscles bulge and rise beneath the shoulders of 
Sarbella’s perfectly fitting dinner coat, and, while 
she had not glimpsed his face, it was easy to 
know that he, too, had experienced a distinct 
shock. 

“I have not tasted a better cocktail since my last 
trip abroad,” exclaimed the artist, forcing a smile 
to his face. As a matter of fact, he had swallowed 
the drink mechanically, hardly tasting it. 

“Now for dinner!” cried Joan, taking full com¬ 
mand of things. Putting her fingers on Sarbella’s 
arm, she led the way into the house and toward 
the big, old-fashioned dining room. 

Kirklan Gilmore jerked himself together with 
visible effort; his impulse was to dash forward, 
face his wife and his friend squarely, demanding 
sternly, “What does this mean? Answer me! 
What does this mean?” But good breeding de¬ 
manded restraint; his obligations as a host required 


60 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


a simulated appearance of naturalness. With a 
queer mental offshoot he wondered how he would 
have made one of the characters in his books behave 
under a similar circumstance. 

A moment or so later the five were at the 
dinner table. Even Mrs. Gilmore, whom nature 
had endowed with no large store of astuteness, 
realized the strain, realized that something was 
tremendously amiss, and she, poor and well-meaning 
soul, made matters all the worse by the uneasy, 
inquiring glances that she cast about the table 
in nervous bewilderment. 

Victor Sarbella managed to carry things off with 
fairly commendable grace, but not so with Helen 
Gilmore, who made clumsy mistakes with the 
table silver and not once lifted her eyes either 
to her husband or the others. The rouge on 
her cheeks made the paleness nothing short of 
ghastly. 

Kirklan Gilmore’s eyes, slightly narrowed and 
brighter than they should have been, shot quick, 
queer glances from his wife to his guest. Perhaps 
it was but natural that his mind swept to one 
conclusion—a previous affair between these two. 
His friend and his wife! The salad fork trembled 
in his hand. Time after time he suppressed 
the impulse to leap to his feet, voicing the demand 
that kept shrieking through his mind: “What 
is there between you two?” 

Only Joan’s persevering diplomacy kept them 
at fairly even keel; she rattled on with scarcely 
a halt. But the dinner was a thoroughly miserable 
affair, and by the time it came to an end the 
nerves of the five were raw. 


IN THE STUDIO 


61 


Joan’s heart ached for the suffering she saw 
in Kirklan’s face, and there swept through her 
an intensified hate for the woman who had won 
the man she loved. 

“She’s going to wreck his life!” she said under 
her breath. “I know it—I know it! She’s killing 

him—killing his soul! If she does that. I’ll-” 

The thought that came into her mind frightened 
her, for she had not known that there was so 
much of primitive passion in herself. 

The moment the unhappy dinner came to an 
end, Helen Gilmore murmured an almost incoherent 
something about a headache and fled upstairs 
to her room. The other Mrs. Gilmore, too, faded 
out of sight, still wondering what it might be 
all about. Joan was inclined to remain, but 
Kirklan showed very plainly that she wasn’t wanted. 

“Run along, Joan, if you don’t mind,” he said 
in a jerky, strained voice. “Sarbella and I”— 
it was to be noted that he had dropped the more 
cordial and customary name of Victor—“are going 
to—to talk things over. Come out to the studio 
with me, Sarbella; the manuscript of the book 
is out there.” 

Victor Sarbella was not deceived into any notion 
that Gilmore had in mind a discussion of the 
new novel, and, while he shrank from what he 
felt sure was going to be a cross-examination, 
he did not see how he could very well refuse. 

“All right,” he agreed with a nod, reaching 
for his cigarette case. Silently the two men 
left the house and cut across the lawn through 
the gathering dusk toward the studio. No word 
was spoken as they entered the building and 



62 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


mounted the stairs to the writer’s workroom above. 
Kirklan Gilmore switched on the lights, and 
the two faced each other at the desk strewn 
with pages of the manuscript. Sarbella remained 
calm, but the other let himself go, and his whole 
body shook like a man in the grip of a chill. 

“Well, let’s have it—^the truth!” he rasped, 
almost a sobbing catch in his voice. 

Victor Sarbella finished off his cigarette with 
a long puff that slid the burning edge of the 
tobacco tube close to his lips; at the same time 
he reached for a fresh smoke, tapped it on the 
back of his hand, and then lighted it with the 
stub of the old. A thin trickle of smoke swam 
slowly through his parted lips. 

“Just what do you mean?” he parried. 

“Don’t you fence with me, Sarbella!” Gilmore 
shouted hoarsely. “I’ve got to the breaking point. 
My nerves are stretched tight as piano wires; 
if something snaps ” 

“That’s the trouble, Kirkland,” Sarbella broke in 
soothingly. “You’re nervous and upset over some¬ 
thing; that’s the size of it. You were upset when I 
first saw you, and I-” 

“That’s got nothing to do with it, Sarbella. 
You know very well what I mean. I saw Helen— 
my wife—saw her face when I introduced you 
two on the porch. Introduced you!’* His voice 
rose shrilly. “I guess you know her better than 
I do; I saw-” 

“Kirklan,” again interrupted Sarbella, “that is 
where you are absolutely wrong. I give you my 
solemn word of honor, my oath as a gentleman^ 
that until this evening I never saw Mees Gilmore.” 





IN THE STUDIO 


63 


“Oath of a gentleman!” derided Gilmore. “You’re 
the sort who would lie like a gentleman. Man, 
I tell you that I saw—her face! Helen, my wife, 
was afraid of you. Why was she afraid of you? 
Why did her face turn so pale? Why did she 
look as if she were fainting?” 

“She said,” Sarbella replied smoothly, “that it 
was the name—^that she had once known some 
one named Sarbella. Why couldn’t that be true!” 

“It could be, but it isn’t. Sarbella, you’re 
hiding something from me, and I’ve got to have 
the truth.” His hands were clenched, and his 
eyes blazed with jealousy. “Isn’t it a fact that 
you were once in love with her.” 

A harsh, humorless laugh, the sort of a laugh 
that it is not pleasant to hear, burst through 
Sarbella’s lips. 

“In love with her? Great Lord, no—a thousand 

times no! I-” He broke off, on the verge 

of saying too much, of betraying the truth in 
one exclamation of passionate, hot-blooded hatred. 
“I tell you again, Kirklan, that your wife and 
I never met until this very evening. That is 
quite all I have to say; you must take that or 
leave it.” 

Sarbella paused as if he would choke on one 
more word. 

Chest heaving, lips twitching, Kirklan Gilmore 
leaned heavily across the table, staring into tlte 
eyes of this other man whom he had considered 
his friend. Suddenly he straightened and leaped 
toward the door, turning the key in the lock; 
swiftly he turned and faced Victor Sarbella. 

“Take it or leave it, eh?” he panted. “Suppose 



THE PORCELAIN MASK 


I won’t leave it; suppose I tell you that you re 
not to leave this room until you tell me what 
I want to know? What you are hiding from 
me?” His voice broke. “I—I can’t stand these 
lies, these evasions, this deceit any longer. You 
have given me your word that you have told 
the truth, that you never saw Helen before to-day. 
I don’t know whether to believe that or not. 
But, if it is the truth, you know something— 
something about her. In Heaven’s name, man, 
tell me! Who is she? I ask you—what is she?” 

Victor Sarbella shook his head slowly. “She 
is your wife,” he answered, as if that might 
explain why he must keep sealed lips, but Gilmore 
would not have it rest that way. 

“Yes,” he groaned, “she is my wife, but who 
was she, what was she before—before she became 
my wife? I think you know.” His shoulders 
shook with a dry sob. “Sarbella, can’t you see 
what this is doing to me—^that it is driving me 
mad?” 

Again Sarbella’s head described a sadly negative 
gesture. “I am sorry, Kirklan,” he said; “believe 
me, Kirklan, I am your friend, and I am sorry, 
but there is nothing I can tell you. Set at rest 
any fears you may have had about”—his lips 
twitched into a bitter smile—“about any romantic 
attachment between us. Anything but that!” 

Kirklan Gilmore took a step forward; the next 
instant he had flung himself on Sarbella, and, 
although he was the less powerful man, the latter 
was taken off his guard and staggered back into 
a chair. 

“You tell me what you know, and tell me 


IN THE STUDIO 


65 


now, or Fm going to kill you!” he gritted. “Tell 
me before I have to choke the life out of you.” 
His fingers squeezed about the artist’s throat, and 
Sarbella had to fight him off to break the grip. 
With a tremendous heave of the muscles he flung 
Gilmore back, and the novelist, reeling, lost his 
balance and plunged heavily to the floor. 

He lay absolutely still. 

Victor Sarbella stood over him, staring down 
at him pityingly, “I am sorry for you, Kirklan,” 
he said huskily: “yes, I am sorry—^very sorry.” 
He went to the door, unlocked it with the key, 
and turned, just as Gilmore was struggling up. 
“I cannot very well remain your guest now, 
Kirklan. Oh, I don’t mean just this.” His fingers 
touched his tom collar, the rumpled bosom of 
his dress shirt. But I’ll stay until to-morrow. 

We can’t forget that we are under obligations 

to the publishers. Yes, I will wait until to-morrow; 
see if you can’t pull yourself together long enough 
to talk things over.” 

Gilmore gave so sign that he had heard, and 

Victor Sarbella passed on out of the studio and 
down the old wooden steps of the stable. When 
the door closed, Kirklan Gilmore slowly dragged 
himself to his feet and moved toward the chair 
by the desk. Like a rheumatic old man with 
protesting bone joints, he lowered himself into 

the chair, his body sagging limply forward until 
he lay across the desk, his face pillowed in his 
arms. He lay like that, his senses numbed, almost 
as if he were dead, for a long time. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE G E T-A WAY 

N ot for a moment did Don Haskins doubt that 
Helen Gilmore—legally Helen Haskins, by 
grace of an unsundered legal tie previously knotted 
—would “come through” with the thousand dollars 
that he had demanded as the price of his silence. 
She wouldn’t dare refuse; bigamy is a sternly 
met crime in New York State. 

With a thousand dollars to the good he felt 
that his get-away was safely assured, for a thou¬ 
sand dollars would enable him to put a long distance 
behind him. And so, sitting in the squalid, shabby 
little third-floor room in Eighth Avenue Annie’s 
disreputable haven for those hunted men who 
can raise the price of her protection, he was 
laying his plans. Several points of the compass 
beckoned to him; California intrigued him, but 
he was also inclined toward Cuba, and, even at 
a lesser distance, Florida waved its picturesque 
palms beckoningly before his mental vision. He 
had thought, too, of South America, but was wise 
enough to know that this trip would have to 
contemplate the dangers of getting a passport. 
A passport is not readily secured by a man of 
Don Haskins’ unavory standing as a citizen; so 
he scratched South America off his list. 

It had been Monday afternoon when Helen had 
called at Eighth Avenue Annie’s, leaving a pay¬ 
ment of one hundred and ninety dollars on account; 


THE GET-AWAY 


67 


it was now just gathering dark of Tuesday, and 
so certain was Don that the dawning of the 
following day would bring the remainder of the 
thousand that he was making his very definite 
plans for sliding out of town—quickly. 

He had allowed his beard to grow; that would 
help some. Perhaps it wouldn’t fool the eyes 
of a dick who knew him well—and many of 
them did—but it added materially to his chances. 
The cops, since he had no successful job to his 
credit, wouldn’t expect him to be in funds. The 
thing to do, he reasoned, was the thing he wouldn’t 
be expected to do; therefore with fifty of the 
one hundred and ninety dollars he had got from 
Helen—previously diminished by an even hundred 
that he owed his old hag protector—he had sent 
Annie out among the secondhand shops of Eighth 
Avenue to gather a wardrobe, a gentleman’s ward¬ 
robe, at reasonable prices. 

“Nuttin’ flashy,” he had warned; “respectable- 
lookin’, but none of the race-track stuff, see.” 

And so Eighth Avenue Annie went forth among 
the clothing shops where stained, ancient garments 
are sponged, pressed, and advertised “Just Like 
New.” True enough, Annie took her own reward 
for this service; to the suit of blue serge for 
which she paid twelve dollars and ninety-five 
cents, she affixed a price tag which read twenty- 
four dollars and ninety-five cents, and, as you 
might expect, put the difference into her own 
capacious and ever-hungry pocket. 

There seems to be some persistent destiny that 
has the habit of sending policemen past a certain 
spot at a certain moment. It is always happening. 


68 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


as an almost daily glance at your morning news¬ 
paper will bear affirmative witness. As Eighth 
Avenue Annie was engaged in purchasing Don 
Haskins’ get-away outfit, Detective Sergeant John 
Henry Tish passed the door of Abramson’s dark, 
gloomy and somewhat odorous “Clothes Bought 
and Sold” establishment and chanced to glance 
within. 

Detective Sergeant Tish was not perhaps nearly 
so good a detective as he thought himself to be, 
but he had a good record for arrests and con¬ 
victions; when he made a “pinch” something usually 
came of it. He had been recently assigned to 
this district, on the fringe of the old Tenderloin, 
and he wasn’t so well acquainted as he might 
have been. But he knew Eighth Avenue Annie; 
he had seen her in Jefferson Market Court not 
a great many months before, and Annie’s gargoyle 
face, with the narrow, red eyes, her bulging, 
muscular shoulders, were not easily forgotten. 

“Humph!” grunted Sergeant Tish. “The old hag 
is buyin’ somebody some new rags—^that is some 
rags that was new—one time. Looks as if there 
might be something in it.” 

So, instead of pursuing his way down Eighth 
Avenue, he loitered outside Mr. Abramson’s clut¬ 
tered establishment, to all intents and purposes 
interested in a suit of plaid which occupied the 
central space in the window. “Can’t Tell it from 
New,” read a card. “A Bargain at $22.69.” Mr. 
Abramson, you see, was a great believer in the 
psychology of the odd cent. 

Eighth Avenue Annie striding forth with that 
swaggering, Bowery walk of hers, a bundle under 


THE GET-AWAY 


69 


arm, did not glance behind her. Had she done 
so, she would have seen Sergeant Tish, a short, 
well-fed-looking man, who didn’t look much like 
the usual run of fly cops, lose interest in the 
plaid and follow her at a discreet and disarming 
distance. 

However, when Annie turned in at her place of 
abode and harbored evil-doers just around the 
corner of the second block. Sergeant Tish quickened 
his pace and was directly behind her, as she 
stepped into the vestibule. It might have been 
the ringing of the automatic bell that dimmed her 
ears to the pad of the detective’s shoes, for, as 
she turned, there was Tish, grinning at her wisely, 
his foot thrust forward to prevent the door being 
suddenly slammed in his face. He had no in¬ 
tention of finding himself on the outside looking 
in. 

“Say!” growled Annie. “What’s the game?” 
Sharp as were her red, narrow eyes, she failed 
to see the brand of headquarters in the plain¬ 
clothes-man’s round, fat face. 

Sergeant Tish continued grinning, but it wasn’t 
a grin to arouse any contagious mirth or even 
good humor. 

“Who’d you buy the new rags for?” he demanded. 
“I wanna know a thing or two about that. Get 
me?” 

Eighth Avenue Annie got him; there was the 
tone of authority in the man’s voice. 

“What’s it to you?” she demanded with pre¬ 
tended indignation. “Ain’t a lady gotta right-” 

“Cheese it!” broke in Detective Tish. “I know 
you, an’ I gotcher number. When a bird sends 



70 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


you out to buy ’im clothes, he’s either a cripple 
or a crook—an’ if he was that bad a cripple I guess 
he wouldn’t need any clothes.” He chuckled in ap¬ 
preciation of his own wit. “So don’t try no bluff 
with me. Take your hand off that door.” 

Annie had often defied the law, but her defiance 
was never flaunted openly. When a cop said open 
the door, she opened it quickly. 

“I ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” she protested with 
a ludicrous pretense at inocence. “There ain’t 
nothin’ wrong, is there, in doin’ a favor fer a 
gent roomer. Is there, now? He said fer me to 
go out an’ buy ’em- 

“Where is this guy?” broke in Sergeant Tish. 
“I guess I’ll give him the once-over. Chances are 
he’s some bird that’s wanted, tryin’ to do a swift 
one outta town. Yeah?” 

“I dunno,” muttered Annie; “I dunno nothin’ about 
’im. I rents ’im a room; he pays his rent. I’m a 
poor lady tryin’ to make an honest livin’, I am.” 

“That’s a double lie,” snorted Sergeant Tish. 
You ain’t no lady, an’ you never glommed an honest 
jitney in your life. Lead on, you; I’m gonna give 
this guy the once-over an’ a free ride most likely.” 

The woman hesitated, for she was at a ticklish 
disadvantage. The surprise of the detective’s visit 
was too complete to give her any opportimity to 
warn Don Haskins who waited in the vile little 
room on the third floor for his new wardrobe. 

On the stairs leading to the top story there 
was concealed a very cunning little device that 
in six years of hiding hunted men for pay had 
not once been detected by the police. Two of 
the steps, by a simple mechanical operation, could 



THE GET-AWAY 


71 


be jerked upward into an opening large enough 
to admit a man’s body. Below this was space 
large enough to accommodate several persons, the 
steps then dropped back into place, looking thor¬ 
oughly innocent. But Haskins had not been given 
the secret of the third-floor stairs, and now there 
would be no opportunity to favor him with this 
belated knowledge. 

“I’ll run right up an’ tell Mr. Smith to come 
down,” said the old hag. 

“Say,” sneered Sergeant Tish, “do I look that 
easy? On the level, do you think I’d fall for 
that stuff?” It angered him that she should have 
so little regard for his intelligence. “What floor 
did you say?” He unbuttoned his coat which 
fitted somewhat tightly across his ample stomach, 
giving him freer access to his police automatic 
strapped beneath his arm. 

Eighth Avenue Annie had not lived in the under¬ 
world for nothing; she knew the ways of the 
cops. She knew, for example, that the first overt 
move she made to protect her well-paying lodger 
would land her in jail on a charge of aiding 
and abetting a criminal. She wanted to help 
Haskins, not from any motive of sentiment, but 
because she expected to garner further money 
from Don’s “swell sister,” as she supposed Helen 
Gilmore to be. 

“I didn’t say what floor, off’cer,” she muttered, 
“but I’m sayin’ now. He’s on the thoid. I ain’t 
protectin’ nobody that ain’t right.” She tried to 
affect a virtuous attitude. “I dunno nothin’ except 
he spiels it to me his moniker is—^um—Smith.” 

“Lead the way,” ordered Sergeant Tish. “Not 


72 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


a word outta you either. Get me? No tip-off 
goes with me; try that, and it’s the station for 
yours. If you think I won’t, try it.” Evidently 
Tish had not been deceived in the slightest by 
her attitude of innocence. “You go on up them 
stairs just like you was hringin’ back his new 
duds. You say, ‘Here’s your clothes, mister.’ I 
guess we won’t use the Smith racket, either. 
His name ain’t Smith, and you know it ain’t.” 

“Yes, off’cer,” agreed Eighth Avenue Annie. 

“Not so loud with that officer talk,” warned 
Tish. “Ease down on the lung power, you. Now, 
let’s go.” 

He motioned to the bundle she had just brought 
in from Abramson’s, and she obediently picked 
it up, starting up the dank, musty stairs. The 
detective followed, walking with surprising light¬ 
ness of step for so corpulent a man. They reached 
the second-floor landing and passed around a bend 
in the hall to the next flight. There was no 
hope for Don Haskins now. 

As they reached the top, lighted murkily by 
the dirty skylight. Sergeant Tish crouched low 
so that his head and shoulders would be shielded 
by the bulking form of Eighth Avenue Annie and 
her packages. The woman’s shoes clattered noisily, 
and Haskins came to the door with the broken, 
patched panel, his unshaven face peering out. 

“You got the stuff, huh?” he grunted. “I’ll 
bet it’s a tin suit.” 

Eighth Avenue Annie made no effort to warn 
him; that might mean shooting, and she wanted 
no shooting in her house. 


THE GET-AWAY 73 

“It’s a good suit,” she muttered in a hoarse 
guttural. “It cost-” 

“Stick ’em up” roared Sergeant Tish flipping 

out his gun, and rising to his full height, leveling 
the weapon at the now wide-open door. “Get 
’em up, or I’ll drill you.” 

Don Haskins’ hands went up; he would have 
been a fool otherwise. His lips twisted, as they 
emitted a vicious snarl. 

“Double crossed me,” he said. “Took my good 

jack an’ called in the cops. Curse you, ITl-” 

“Shut your mouth!” Annie whispered hoarsely, 
her own face livid. 

Sergeant Tish grinned delightedly; he was be¬ 
ginning to realize that it had been a fortunate 
circumstance looking so casually into the doorway 
of Abramson’s secondhand clothing store. He had 
felt all along, of course, that the woman was 
lying, that she was keeping a man in hiding. 
And men do not hide unless they are wanted. 
It might be a big haul. He took another step 
forward and peered closely into the face of his 
quarry. 

“I can’t name him offhand, but I guess the 
Bertillon boys’ll rap to ’im fast enough.” He 
backed Haskins into the stuffy, dirty little room 
at the point of the gun and reached into the 
pocket of his coat for an ever-ready pair of 
nippers. 

“Stick out them fins,” he ordered. “I’ll get 
these darbies on you, an’ then we’ll talk things 
over.” 

Knowing that the gun was beaded for his vitals, 
and that any fool can shoot straight with an 




74 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


automatic, Don Haskins stuck out his hands; the 
handcuffs snapped about his wrists. 

“What’s the pinch for?” he demanded with 
an effort at bluster. “You ain’t got nothin’ on 
me; I ain’t done nothin’.” 

“Well, anyhow, I guess you’ve done time,” 
Sergeant Tish said shrewdly. “What’s your name 
down at central office?” 

Don Haskins remained sullenly silent, his eyes 
glowing hotly, as they stared at Eighth Avenue 
Annie. The hag had let the bundle from Abram¬ 
son’s slide to the floor, and with both hands 
she pushed back the dirty gray hair that straggled 
down across her soiled face. 

“Want to hold out on me, eh?” grunted Sergeant 
Tish, with a shrug of his flesh-padded shoulders, 
as he thrust the gun back into its holster. His 
chubby face wore a smile, for he was well 
pleased with himself; a ^ single-handed capture 
is a thing that a cop delights in. And, if it 
turned out to be an important arrest—well, Tish 
had a hunch that it was just that, an important 
arrest. “Suit yourself, John Doe; you’ll get the 
rap fast enough when I get you downtown.” 

Don Haskins knew how hopeless it was now. 
Ten minutes ago he had been daydreaming pleas¬ 
antly of Florida, perhaps Cuba, and now—Sing Sing 
via the Tombs. It all depended on whether or 
not “Dago Mike,” his confederate in the loft job, 
net profit ten dollars split three ways, had squealed. 
And he was sure Dago Mike had squealed. The 
warehouse watchman had been croaked, and that 
meant that not only the actual slayer, but Don 


THE GET-AWAY 75 

Haskins, as a participant in the crime, was liable 
to the death sentence. 

Haskins thought swiftly, desperately. The chair! 
The sickening vision of it swam before his eyes 
and drove his brain to cunning that was some¬ 
what beyond his normal mental processes. He 
staggered back to the unkempt cot. 

“Gimme a cigarette,” he muttered thickly, his 
nerve apparently deserting him. “ITl talk—^tell 
you who I am. I—I gotta have a fag first.” 

Sergeant Tish had seen that kind before. “Sure,” 
he agreed readily enough and produced a package 
of his own. Don lifted his manacled arms and 
took a cigarette. It trembled between his fingers, 
wabbled between his twitching lips. The detective 
lighted a match and held the flaming stick toward 
kim. 

Haskins inhaled deeply and seemed to grow 
calmer; his eyes raised, taking his captor’s measure. 
He noted with satisfaction that he was almost a 
head taller than Tish. Even then he found the 
time to wonder how he had managed to get on 
the force. 

Tish did not rush his man. “Take your time,” 
he encouraged. “No hurry; spill it when you’re 
ready.” 

Eighth Avenue Annie edged to the door from 
the hall, peering inside with a horrible leer, as 
she considered that this man whom she had be¬ 
friended—for pay, of course—was going to be 
a yellow skunk and “cough up.” He would prob¬ 
ably squeal on her, too; tangle her up in his 
own net of trouble. That was the way with 
some of these rats; they couldn’t stand the gaff 


76 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


and wouldn’t protect their friends. She muttered 
something that sounded like “scum.” 

Little did Annie know what was going on in 
Don Haskins’ mind. Don had never been a swift 
thinker, and hard drinking of bootleg whisky 
hadn’t added to his nimbleness of wit, but his 
brain was traveling in high now. He knew that 
it wouldn’t do him any good to conceal his identity; 
lie as he would, there would be plenty of cops 
down at headquarters to remember him. More 
than that, his picture was in the rogues’ gallery, 
his finger prints on file. But he didn’t propose 
to make that trip down to headquarters. Despera¬ 
tion made him resourceful. 

“My name is Haskins,” he muttered. “They 
used to call me Nifty Don in the old days, but 
you ain’t got nothin’ on me. On the level, you 
ain’t got nothin’ on me.” 

Sergeant Tish frowned for a moment and then 
a look of delight spread over his round, fat face. 
“Guess again, Haskins. There’s a general order 
out for you. You’re wanted for a croak out 
in the Bronx; I forget the details, but you’re 
wanted all right. Yeah, I’ll say you are.” 

Don groaned. He had been right in his fears; 
Dago Mike had squealed. The handcuffed man 
got to his feet; his shoulders heaved, as he inhaled 
deeply on the now half-consumed cigarette. He 
filled his lungs to every cubic inch of their capacity. 
He took a step toward the detective and, opening 
his mouth, expelled a cloud of smoke directly 
into Tish’s face. 

Sergeant Tish, half blinded, was taken totally 
by surprise; he staggered back and made a motion 


THE GET-AWAY 


77 


toward his gun, but he was not quick enough. 
The prisoner’s manacled arms flashed upward and 
downward, the metal wristlets catching the de¬ 
tective a stunning blow on the side of the head. 
The latter’s knees sagged, but he continued to 
fumble for his gun, when Haskins struck again, 
and this time the plain-clothes man crumpled up 
on the floor, blood gushing from the edge of his 
scalp. 

“My Gawd!” whispered Eighth Avenue Annie. 

For the moment Haskins ignored her, as he 
knelt beside the form of his captor and took the 
police regulation automatic; then he began frisk¬ 
ing the man for the handcuff keys. 

“Here,” he said harshly to the old hag, “get 
these cursed things off of me. Hurry 1” 

“You’se ain’t croaked ’im?” gulped Annie, her 
eyes bulging. 

“Naw,” grunted Don. “Use that key, or I’ll 
give you a dose of the same. I ought to, any¬ 
how, you dirty double crosser. Tipped the cops 
off, didn’tcha?” 

“He seen me buyin’ the clothes; he foffered 
me. See? I didn’t have no chance to give you 
warnin’. Nice fix you got me into, brainin’ a 
dick in my place. They’ll send me away for 
this.” She worked the key in the lock, and 
the handcuffs came free. 

“I hope you get ten years,” Haskins said viciously. 
“Gimme them clothes.” A moment later he was 
changing in trembling haste, shedding the dis¬ 
reputable suit for the more respectable garments 
that Annie had purchased at Abramson’s. His 
fingers were shaking, and he steadied his nerves 


78 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

with a drink from the bottle which rested beside 
the bed. 

Eighth Avenue Annie was twisting her grimy 
old hands in an anguish of terror. She knew 
the aftermath of this, and the revenge of the out¬ 
witted detective was not a pleasant thing to 
consider. Had she dared she would have tried 
to square herself by preventing Haskins’ escape, 
by sending out an alarm, but Haskins was armed 
and at her first move would perhaps kill her. She 
flattened against the wall, sobbing hoarsely in self- 
pity, cursing the man who had sent Haskins to her 
for protection. 

In his haste Haskins forgot something very 
important; he forgot that beneath the dirty mat¬ 
tress was the forty dollars that remained of 
the one hundred and ninety dollars Helen Gilmore 
had given him the previous afternoon. He didn’t 
think of it until he had dashed down the two 
flights of stairs and had reached the street. As 
he realized this amazing oversight and turned back, 
he saw Annie sneaking out of the vestibule, run¬ 
ning. He knew. She was calling the cops, trying 
to square herself. He didn’t dare go back for 
the money. He wheeled in the opposite direction, 
walking swiftly. 

Flight without a dollar in pocket is a problem, 
but desperation has cut many a Gordian knot. 
Eighth Avenue is not a well-lighted street, and 
darkness had settled down over the city. A taxi 
nosed through the gloom, and after but a mo¬ 
ment of hesitation Haskins hailed it; the question 
of fare did not bother him—not with that auto¬ 
matic in his pocket. The taxi drew up alongside 


THE GET-AWAY 79 

the curb; it was a nice new taxi, with a shining, 
spotless coat of blue paint. 

“I wanna get to Yonkers in a hurry,” said Don 
briskly. “Gotta important date out there. How 
quick can y’make it?” Yonkers was the river- 
bordered town which joined the New York city 
limits on the north. 

“Hour and a quarter,” answered the driver, 
giving Haskins a sizing-up look. 

“0. K.,” grunted Haskins. “Let’s travel; go 
down Riverside Drive all the way.” He climbed 
inside, and they were off. 

Don had a particular reason for choosing the 
Riverside Drive route. Past One Hundred and 
Eightieth Street the Drive winds between the river 
and high-towering bluffs, with no houses on either 
side. He desired a quiet place for settling the 
matter of the fare. They had reached the spot 
which is called Inspiration Point, when the fleeing 
passenger rapped on the glass which separted 
him from the chauffeur’s seat. 

“Stop ’er!” he shouted. 

The car ground to a halt, and Haskins leaped 
out, cursing volubly. 

“Lost ring—diamond ring—slipped right off my 
finger. That rock cost me eight hundred bucks,” 
was the excuse he gave. 

The driver stared suspiciously, for his fare did 
not look like a man who would own an eight- 
hundred-dollar diamond ring. 

“Aw, watcha handin’ me?” he growled skepti¬ 
cally. 

Haskins looked up and down the Drive. The 
nearest car was some distance away. His hand 


80 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

slipped to his pocket for the automatic he had 
taken from Sergeant Tish. At the same instant 
he sprang forward. He did not shoot, but brought 
the butt of the weapon down in a vicious swing 
on the fellow’s head. With a grunting, choking 
groan the latter collapsed into hlack unconscious¬ 
ness, still sitting at the wheel. 

The approaching car swept past; another fol¬ 
lowed; and neither paused their swift progress. 
There was no reason why they should have noticed 
anything. Don Haskins lifted out the limp form 
and carried it well back to the side of the road, 
where he quickly rifled the senseless man’s pock¬ 
ets, taking nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents 
in cash, a good watch, and the driving license. 
Then he donned the chauffeur’s cap and climbed 
into the taxi; an instant later he was speeding 
on northward—alone. He was headed for the one 
place where he was sure that he would find 
money and protection—Greenacres. 


CHAPTER VIII 


CAUGHT IN THE WEB 

T he wife of Kirklan Gilmore was not literary, 
had not even any tendencies in that direction; 
no literary qualifications had been required for 
her employment as a typist in Atchinson’s publish¬ 
ing house. Her reading had been superfificial, 
shallow, but she had an adaptable mind and 
was constantly picking up surface things, chance 
clever little quips and quotations, which, if she 
were not put to a severe test, might pass for 
an acquaintance with the classics. 

When overwhelmed by the appearance of Victor 
Sarbella as her husband’s guest, she had fled 
to her room, it was with the realization that 
still another specter of the past had appeared 
to haunt and undo her. And there flashed through 
her mind a fragment of an old quotation: 

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, 

When first we practice to deceive. 

Yes, what a tangled web she had woven— 
inextricably enmeshed in the snarled skeins of 
her ambitious folly. How circumstances had con¬ 
spired against her. 

“What a fool I was to think I could get by 
with it!” she whispered bitterly. “How will it 
end? It was bad enough without Sarbella. Him— 
him! It was like a ghost from the grave. He 
will tell my husband; of course he will tell him 


82 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


—he could want no better revenge than that. 
That look in his eyes—how he hates me!” 

She began to think of flight, even made a 
half-hearted, indecisive move to gather up some 
of her things, but there was no train now until 

morning, and the thought of driving the car, 

novice at the wheel that she was, through the 

dark night terrified her. Besides which the car 
was probably in the garage, locked; and she 

did not have the key. There seemed nothing to 
do but wait. 

Helen would have been a very blind person indeed 
had she not realized that Kirklan had sensed some¬ 
thing amiss in the amazing meeting between her and 
Sarbella; and, as time dragged on—eight o’clock, 
nine, and then ten—she wondered why her hus¬ 
band had not come raging upstairs to fling the past 
accusingly into her face, to order her out of the 
house, perhaps to kill her! 

“Surely he would come if he knew,” she told 
herself. “Hasn’t Sarbella told him? Why, he— 
he must have told him!” It was past her under¬ 
standing. 

Wearily she went to her dressing table, removed 
the dress she had worn at dinner, slipped into a 
flowing-sleeved dressing gown that was charmingly 
open at the throat, and began to let down her 
glorious bronze hair which cascaded over her 
shoulders. 

Detached as Greenacres was, the house was very 
still, so still that the many sounds which always 
fill a country night, floated through the window, 
magnified by her taut, tortured nerves to crescendo 
volume. 


CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


83 


“Something has got to happen. Why can’t it 
happen now and he over with!” she moaned. “The 
suspense, this awful suspense! I can’t stand it— 
I can’t!” 

Nervously she went to the window, and, pushing 
aside the curtains, leaned out, staring into the 
night. The future, her future, was like that— 
black, impenetrable, void, and she felt that there 
could never be any dawn—not for her, 

“My life’s been nothing but tragedy,” she told 
herself bitterly. “I thought I might be happy 
and respectable. There’s a curse on me; that’s 
what it is, a curse. I’d be better off dead, but— 
I don’t want to die.” 

Helen, staring off into black space, did not see 
the skulking form that moved stealthily through 
the shrubbery, circling uneasily, furtively about the 
house. The slinking man stared upward at the 
lighted window, stopped, as she leaned out across 
the sill, framed in the open space by the light which 
burned within the room behind her. 

“It’s her!” he grunted, but, as he crept forward, 
intending to call softly, she disappeared. 

Don Haskins had deserted the stolen taxicab two 
miles down the road; by cautious questioning he 
had learned the location of Greenacres and had 
walked the rest of the way, and here he was. It 
had been a troubling problem as to how he would 
get in touch with Helen. He had thought of going 
into the village and calling her on the telephone, 
but there were objections to this plan. In the 
first place he did not want to risk an appearance 
in the village; added to that, it might be bad 
business calling her to the phone so late at night. 


84 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


It had been his tentative idea to find a hiding 
place on the spacious estate until he could get in 
touch with her. Already he had considered the 
stable as a likely place for his purpose. 

“That’s her room,” he told himself, still looking 
up at the lighted window. “Now, if she was 
alone——” He crept closer to the house the better 
to study the situation, and he found it very much 
to his liking. The window of Helen’s room opened 
out on the roof of the veranda which semicircled 
the house on two sides. 

It might be risky business, but a desperate man, 
the prospect of the death chair looking him in the 
face, does not stop to weigh such minor risks 
as this. He reached an almost instant decision. He 
sat dowm in the grass and removed his shoes; tying 
the laces together, he swung them about his neck. 

“I never done no porch climbin’,” he muttered, 
“hut it don’t look so hard.” 

But it was hard, much harder than he had 
anticipated; the porch post was large of circum¬ 
ference, making it difficult to hug his arms about it 
with a freezing grip. Several times he slid pant- 
ingly down just as his straining fingers were within 
a few inches of the raised awning. The perspiration 
poured from his body and moistened the palms of 
his hands, so that he had to keep wiping them dry. 

In one last desperate effort he got hold of the 
awning’s edge and began to pull himself upward 
to the cornice. The triumph, however, was far 
from noiseless; awning hooks snapped loose from 
the wood, and the awning itself tore with a ripping 
sound under the strain. 

Panting, breathless, exhausted, Haskins lay flat 



CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


85 


on the roof, waiting to see if the sounds would 
arouse the house. He marked the time hy count¬ 
ing, one to sixty, one to sixty, until four minutes 
had dragged past. Not even Helen, within the 
room of the open window directly above, seemed 
to have heard. 

Haskins began edging himself, a few inches at 
a time, across the shingles toward the patch of 
light that streamed out across the roof. Presently 
he had reached the sill and, drawing himself up, 
peered within. 

Helen was again at the dressing table, mechani¬ 
cally applying bedtime cosmetics. Otherwise the 
room was empty; Don made sure of that before 
he pulled himself still further forward. 

“Sh!” he hissed. “It’s me—Don. Douse the 

glim!” 

Helen Gilmore did not turn; there was no need. 
Through the dressing-table mirror she could see 
his unshaven face at the corner of the window sill. 
Her hand clapped to her mouth to stem the scream 
which rose in her throat. Her body rocked in the 
low-backed chair, but she did not faint. 

“Douse the light!” Haskins commanded again in 
a piercing whisper. “Somebody might see me 
sneakin’ in.” 

Helen stumbled unsteadily to her feet and snapped 
out the lights. In the darkness she heard him 
floundering through the window and into the room, 
heard the curtains rip, when he caught at them, 
evidently to keep his balance, as he lunged forward. 
She even heard his panting breath, as it wheezed 
through his mouth. 

Don turned, lowered the sash, and drew down 


86 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


the blind. “Lock the door an’ then flash on the 
lights again,” he ordered tensely. 

“The door is already locked,” answered Helen, 
as she fumbled for the light switch. The next 
instant they were blinking at each other; she lean¬ 
ing limply against the wall, he standing in the 
center of the floor. “My God, Don, what made you 
come here—^to-night of all nights? I can’t stand 
any more; I can’t. You gave me until to-mor¬ 
row- 

“Blame the damn cops,” he grunted. “It was 
them did it—^them an’ Eighth Avenue Annie. She 
sicked ’em onto me.” He still believed that the 
old hag had double crossed him. 

“You mean-” 

“Yeah, they’re after me. I’m in for it right. 
They had the darbies on me, but I beaned the 
dick that nabbed me, got ’em off, took his gat, 
swiped a taxi, an’ here I am. My hunch was right. 
Dago Mike squealed on the loft-job croak.” 

“How did you—find me—^this room?” gasped 
Helen. 

Despite the desperation of the situation, Don 
Haskins grinned a little. 

“Seen you when you poked your head outta the 
window; shinned up the porch, an’ here I am.” 

“I—I haven’t got the money, Don; I haven’t got 
it—yet.” 

“But you’re gonna get it to-morrow? I betcha 
y’are.” His tone was menacing. “You gotta hide 

me somewheres until- Mebbe you can drive 

me somewheres in a car. Boston, huh?” 

Helen lifted her hands in a weary gesture. 
“Everything seems to be happening at once,” she 



CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


87 


whispered. “I—I don’t know if I am going to 
be able to get the money or not—now.” 

The man glowered menacingly. “Don’tcha try 
to pull no stall on me; that stuff don’t go. Under¬ 
stand ?” 

“Don, listen. My husband was on the same street 
yesterday when—when I went to that place to see 
you. His publisher saw me—the man I used to 
work for.” 

“Aw, say; you don’t expect me to swallow no 
guff like that?” 

“Sh! Not so loud, Don. It’s true. Atchinson 
saw me. Kirklan didn’t believe it at first, hut now 
he feels sure it’s true. At first he’d promised me 
the money. I told him that I wanted to pay an 
old bill, but I don’t know what he is going to 
do now. Then”—a shudder went through her— 
“to make it all worse, a man came to the house to¬ 
night, a Mr. Sarbella. He-” 

Haskins lifted his hand to his unshaven chin 
and stared at her dubiously. “Sarbella? I guess 
you’re bats, ain’tcha? Why, that guy’s dead!” 

“Not—not Andrea,” choked Helen. “Victor Sar¬ 
bella. At first I thought—they look so much alike. 
He recognized me. Oh, the awful look of hatred 
that he gave me!” 

“You mean that Sarbella spilled to Gilmore?” 

“I—I don’t know. I haven’t seen any one since 
dinner. I—I suppose he did. He hates me, and 
he wants revenge. The newspapers said-” 

“That he was gonna get you,” finished Don. 
“Yeah, I remember readin’ that. The papers made 
quite a piece about it—Eyetalian revenge an’ that 
sort of spiel. I guess you’re some scared that 


88 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


the Sarbella guy’s gonna croak you, huh? Right 
here in the house, is he?” 

Helen nodded. “Yes, right here in the house,” 
she answered. 

Don whistled softly. “Well, if that ain’t the cat’s 
eyebrows!” he murmured, as he stared at her sus¬ 
piciously. If what she told him was true, he prob¬ 
ably had lost the club he had been holding over 
her head to extort money from her. But he doubted 
if it were true; Helen, he told himself, was clever. 
Perhaps she hadn’t found it easy to get the thousand 
dollars blackmail money from her husband, and she 
had made up this story as a pure bluff. 

“Where’s the Gilmore guy?” he demanded. 

“I don’t know. I told you that I hadn’t seen any 
one since dinner. I can’t understand why Kirklan 
hasn’t come to me, if Sarbella has told him.” 

Haskins pursed his lips thoughtfully and wrinkled 
his shallow forehead; after a moment he nodded. 
“I gotcha; if Gilmore had the low-down on you 
he’d have come stormin’ in here to have it out with 
you. Sure he would. No, I guess Sarbella ain’t 
spilled to him. I guess that ain’t his way of gettin’ 
even with you. Stiletto! That’s the way them 
Eyetalians do it.” 

Helen gasped; she hadn’t thought of that pos¬ 
sibility. She was inclined to treat the suggestion 
lightly, but there came back to her the memory of 
Victor Sarbella’s black eyes flaming into her face, 
hot with a stored-up hatred, and she shivered. 

“Oh, I—I don’t think he would kill me!” she 
gasped. 

“Then you don’t know them Eyetalians,” Don ‘ 
grunted sagely. “They sure is strong on the re- 


CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


89 


venge stuff. If I was you Fd keep right here 
in this room, while he was on the premises. But 
that’s your trouble, and I got troubles of my own. 
When do I get that thousand bucks you was gonna 
hand over?” 

“But if Sarbella has told Kirklan who I am, 
what I was before-” 

“Then you figger to pass me up, huh? Guess again. 
Even if Sarbella does, Gilmore won’t squeal to the 
cops; a guy like him don’t want no family scandal, 
see! Mebbe be’ll show you the gate, but he ain’t 
gonna send you up the river—not if he’s crazy 
about you like you said yesterday. But me, that’s 
different. You done me dirty; you thro wed me 
over, made a bum outta me.” His face contorted 
unpleasantly. “I owe you one, I do, an’ I’m 
handin’ you this on the level; if I get nabbed this 
trip I’m goin’ to spill. I’m gonna send for the dis¬ 
trict attorney an’ tell him-” 

“I’ll try to get the money for you, Don; I’ll try 
my best,” broke in Helen with a quick promise. 

Don glared at her triumphantly, as he reached 
into his pocket for one of the cigarettes that he 
had taken from the unconscious taxi driver, lighted 
it, and, puffing slowly, began rocking to and fro 
on his feet. A silly smile spread over his face, 
as glancing down, he saw a bare toe protruding 
from one sock, where a hole had been rubbed by 
friction against the porch post in his climb of a 
few minutes before. He remembered that his shoes 
still swung from around his neck. With a chagrined 
exclamation he untied the laces and put the shoes 
on. Helen did not smile. 

“Yes,” she said again, “I’ll try to get the money 



90 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


for you to-morrow.” Her hands went out in a 
nervous gesture, and Don caught the sparkle of a 
diamond on her finger. She had not worn it on her 
visit to Eighth Avenue Annie’s—for good reasons. 
Haskins stared at the ring and put a hasty appraisal 
of four or five hundred dollars on it. 

“I’ll take that for security,” he said, pointing. 
She drew back against the wall in a move of 
refusal, and Don, eyes narrowed, darted toward her. 

“Aw, I guess you will,” he growled. 

“But, when his fingers touched the smooth, white 
skin of her arm and seized her in an effort to 
force the diamond from her, a change came over 
him. A fierce return of his old love for her swept 
through him. All his hate melted, like ice returned 
to its first form of water. His arm tightened about 
her, drawing closer; his unshaven, stubbly chin 
buried against her throat. 

“The law says you’re mine!” he panted. “You’re 
my wife. I—I guess I ain’t stopped bein’ crazy 
about you even—even when I was wantin’ to kill 
you—wantin’ to choke the life outta you like— 
like this.” 

The fingers of one hand raised before her face, 
writhing, twisting, like tentacles; they neared her 
soft throat, toyed against the skin. Helen dared 
not scream, but she struggled in silent terror. Her 
arms flailed against his sides, and her hand struck 
against the bulky automatic in his coat. Her fingers 
slipped swiftly into his pocket and seized the butt 
of the gun. 

“You ain’t this guy’s wife,” he went on hoarsely. 
“You’re my wife; the law says so, and you’re goin’ 
with me.” He was so beside himself that he did 


CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


91 


not feel the tug of the pistol, as it came free from 
his pocket. And then there crashed through the 
stillness of the house the slam of a closing door. 
Don’s arms dropped limp. 

“What was that?” he whispered, returning to 
the realization that he was a hunted man, fleeing 
for his life. 

“I think it’s Kirklan,” she whispered. “His room 
adjoins this one. Sh! He’ll hear you.” 

Haskins took a flying leap across the room and 
switched off the lights; his hand went to his pocket. 

“The gat—it’s gone!” he muttered under his 
breath. “It musta dropped outta my pocket when 
I was climbin’ up the porch.” He groped through 
the darkness. “Helen!” 

“Sh!” 

“You gotta stash me away somewheres. If I get 
nabbed, what I said goes—I spill what I know.” 

Helen in the darkness concealed the automatic 
beneath the flowing sleeve of her robe. With the 
gun she was no longer afraid of Don, but she still 
did fear his threats, his power to send her to Au¬ 
burn prison on a charge of bigamy. A moment 
before he had loved her madly; the next he might 
hate her again with just as much intensity. She 
had to aid him—protect him. 

“I’ll hide you,” she told him, “on the third floor 
—an old storeroom. No one ever goes there. I’ll 
bring you food. I’ll try to get you the money; 
I’ll get you money—somehow. I’ll see that you 
get away. Follow me.” 

Cautiously she opened the door. The hallway was 
in friendly darkness. She groped along the wall, 


92 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


fearful that Don would betray their presence, but 
he followed her in stealthy silence. 

The third-floor stairway was inclosed, and it was 
reached through a door which, since the third 
floor was seldom used, creaked dismally, as she 
swung it open. 

“Up there!” she whispered. “The last door at 
the left; you’ll know it. It’s a storeroom. I’ll see 
you—some time to-morrow.” 

The door closed again whiningly, inclosing Don 
Haskins within the stairway. He considered it safe 
to light a match and did so to illuminate the upward 
climb. He saw accumulated dust, evidence of disuse; 
Greenacres servants were not good housekeepers 
above the second floor, it seemed. Without any 
difficulty he found the storeroom and, striking an¬ 
other match, discovered that a kindly circiunstance 
had left a discarded couch for him to rest upon. 
He sat down on the edge of it and felt in his 
pocket for his package of cigarettes, and then 
something dawned upon him. The gun had been 
in his pocket after he had got inside the house; 

he remembered the touch of it, as he had sought 

out a cigarette. 

“Curse her!” he gritted. “She took that gat outta 
my pocket. What did she want with it, anyhow? 

I got a good notion to go back down there an’-” 

He lighted a fag and smoked nervously, indecisively. 
He wanted his gun. A desperate man feels safer 
with something to shoot with, but he could not 

quite make up his mind to risk a return to the 

second floor. 

Helen had returned to her room without detec¬ 
tion. She switched on the lights again, but in her 


CAUGHT IN THE WEB 


93 


agitation forgot to lock the door behind her. 
Stunned, nervously exhausted by this new-conspir¬ 
ing circumstance, the appearance of Don, she sank 
down into a chair, and, as her arms dropped list¬ 
lessly down, the gun which a few brief hours be¬ 
fore had been the property of Detective Sergeant 
John Henry Tish of the New York police depart¬ 
ment slid down to the rug with a faint thud and 
lay at her feet. She made no move to pick it up. 

She faced the door, her eyes fixed vacantly upon 
nothing; hopelessness engulfed her. Don—^her legal 
husband—here. Sarbella here, too. Both of them 
here with her under the same roof. No wonder 
that she was stunned, dazed; at times she felt that 
she must be in the midst of a terrible nightmare, 
that she would wake up with the grateful realiza¬ 
tion that it wasn’t true. 

For perhaps ten minutes she sat motionless, sur¬ 
rendering any attempt to think coherently. Suddenly 
her lax nerves snapped taut, a gasp escaped her 
lips, her eyes widened. There had been no sound 
of a footstep in the hall, there had been no rap 
at the door, but the knob was turning slowly, si¬ 
lently, and the door began to move. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE OPEN DOOR 

T he butler at Greenacres occupied a small room 
on the ground floor near the kitchen. He 
had been asleep for some time when the ringing 
of the doorbell sounded, a loud jangling in the 
night’s stillness; he stirred, muttered grumblingly, 
and was about to tell himself that it must be a 
mistake, when the ring was insistently repeated. 

“There ought to be a law against it,” he de¬ 
clared, as he slid his thin old legs out from beneath 
the sheets, and, not more than partly awake, fum¬ 
bled groggily for the light. The clock on the 
bureau told him that it was half an hour past 
midnight. “Fine time of night for people to go 
around ringing bells at respectable houses!” Again 
the bell started its clatter. “Maybe it’s an auto¬ 
mobile accident out on the road,” he said, but 
he did not hurry. Bates was not the hurrying 
kind. He reached under the pillow for his false 
teeth, clicked them into his toothless giuns, and 
then began to pull his trousers on over the old- 
fashioned nightshirt that flapped about his skinny 
legs. 

Still grumbling under his breath, he shambled 
down the hall, switched on another light, and went 
to the front door, making sure that the safety chain 
was in place before he opened it. Bates did not 
have good eyesight even in the daytime, and at 
night he was little better than blind; squintingly 


THE OPEN DOOR 


95 

he stared through the narrow crack at the form of 
the man out on the porch. 

“What’s wanted?” he snapped complainingly. 

“It’s me, Bates,” came the answer. 

“Heaven bless us, it’s Mr. Kirklan!” gasped the 
butler, making haste to unfasten the chain and 
admit the master of Greenacres. “Was it you, sir, 
doing all that ringing?” 

Kirklan Gilmore, still wearing his disheveled 
dinner coat, entered the house with a slow, drag¬ 
ging step. His face, as it had been all day, was 
haggard and drawn. 

“Yes, I rang,” he answered; “sorry to rout you 
out of bed, but I must have forgotten my keys 
when I dressed for dinner. It was the only way 
I could get in, and I didn’t want to spend the 
night in the studio.” 

“Oh, certainly not, sir,” Bates agreed hastily. 
“You mustn’t think I am objecting to getting up to 
let you in. It’s quite all right, sir—quite all right. 
But you gave me a surprise; I thought you were 
in bed hours ago. Have you been at your writing 
so late?” As an author, Kirklan Gilmore was one 
of those methodical fellows who worked just so 
many hours a day, usually eight, and at the most 
ten. 

He laughed mirthlessly. “Writing? Man, I can’t 
think, much less write.” 

“You are ill, sir,” Bates murmured solicitously. 
“I noticed at dinner that you did not look well. 

I thought-” He broke off abruptly, realizing 

that thinking, especially as regards family affairs, 
was not one of his offices as butler. 

“You thought—what?” 



96 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Er—nothing, sir; I beg your pardon very humbly. 
Is there anything I can do for you before you 
turn in?” 

Kirklan Gilmore’s lips twitched. 

“Thanks for offering. Bates; as a matter of fact, 
I was thinking of asking you to make me one of 
those old-fashioned toddies that you once were 
so good at in my father’s day. With a dash of 
stomach bitters in it, you know. My nerves are 
all shot to pieces. Bates. You can see that; prob¬ 
ably liquor won’t do any good, but perhaps a good, 
long drink will help me get to sleep.” 

Bates’ head wagged approvingly on its slender 
neck. 

“Your father, Mr. Kirklan, always found them 
beneficial after a hard day at court. I remember 

one time when- But I mustn’t be gabbing, when 

your nerves are jumping like that. I’ll mix the 
toddy for you right off, sir.” 

“And I’ll go with you,” said Gilmore. “You know, 
as many of ’em as I’ve had, I don’t think I ever 
saw you make one.” 

“There’s a bit of a trick to it,” Bates admitted 
modestly and shuffled toward the rear of the house, 
Gilmore at his slippered heels. A moment later 
the butler was performing a service for the author 
that, in the old days, he had performed many times 
for Kirklan’s father. Kirklan wasn’t so fond of 
liquor as his father had been. 

“A full measure of orange juice—^like this,” 

Bates was saying. “Two squares of sugar and- 

He droned on, illustrating his formula, as Gilmore 
watched him dully. 



THE OPEN DOOR 97 

“Take one for yourself, Bates,” he invited; but 
the butler shook his head. 

“They say it’s a poor doctor that won’t take 
his own prescription, sir; hut it would upset me 
at this time of night. Thank you just the same, 
sir. Ah, there you are.” He handed Gilmore 
the glass, the square of ice clinking, and the 
latter accepted it, sipping slowly. He did not 
gulp it down hastily, as Bates had expected. 

“Is Sarbella still here?” 

The butler looked bewildered. 

“Is he still here, sir? Why—^why certainly, Mr, 
Kirklan. I took it for granted that he was down 
for a considerable stay. He retired to his room 
a little more than an hour after dinner.” 

Gilmore nodded. 

“Oh, yes, of course,” he murmured and took an¬ 
other sip of the toddy. “But I thought he might 
have gone. A little something happened—something 
that- My God, man, what’s that?” 

His body had tensed, and the glass slipped from 
his fingers, as a look of horror spread over his 
face. Loud, shrill, blood-chilling, there rang through 
the house a terrified scream—a woman’s scream. 

Bang! A sharp, staccato explosion reverberated 
through the night’s stillness. Bates’ thin legs were 
trembling beneath him, his mouth sagged open, 
and his eyes rolled wildly toward the ceiling as, 
struggling for utterance, he pointed a shaking hand 
upward. 

“That was upstairs!” he cried hoarsely. “Some¬ 
thing—something terrible has happened upstairs. It 
was a shot. And that scream—I swear that it was 
Miss Joan’s.” 



98 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Kirklan Gilmore stood, his muscles rigid, hands 
clenched at his sides, gulping hard. 

“Joan’s scream?” he muttered. “No, Bates, nol 
Something tells me, man, that it was my wife. I 
tell you it was my wife. Quick, the stairs I I’ve 
got to know what happened; I’ve got to know. 
Come!” 

And, although it was Gilmore who urged haste, 
it was the butler who took the lead, heading for 
the stairs with a lame lope. 

“I—I can’t understand it, sir,” the servant chattered 
as he went along. “There’s no weapon in the house 
except your shotgun; and that report—it wasn’t 
loud enough for a shotgun. It must have been a 
pistol; I am sure that it must have been a pistol.” 

When they were perhaps halfway up the staircase 
there came to their ears, unmistakably clear and 
permitting no possibility of a mistake, even in the 
tenseness of the moment, the sound of a hastily 
slammed door. Gilmore stopped dead in his tracks. 
An opening door, some member of the household 
aroused by the scream and the explosion, would 
have been perfectly understandable. But a closing 
door! There was the suggestion of hasty, headlong 
flight. Under the circumstances it was a sinister 
sound. 

Nearing the top of the stairs, the two men, master 
and servant, saw a patch of light rays which came 
from an open doorway down the hall. 

“That light!” panted Gilmore. “It comes from 
my wife’s room. The door of her room is open— 
her light is burning!” 

They had now reached that ominously opened 
door; it stood ajar for perhaps ten inches. Gilmore 


THE OPEN DOOR 


99 


stopped again, the breath wheezing through his 
teeth, as if he might have had a presentiment of 
what he might find on the other side of that panel. 
The old butler went on forward, laid his withered 
hand upon the knob; but he was unprepared for 
the sight which met his eyes. With a gasp of 
horror he reeled back. 

“You—you were right, sir,” he whispered 

hoarsely. “It is your wife, and she- Be brave, 

sir—be brave I” 

Helen Gilmore lay in a half-reclining posture on 
a wicker couch. Looking only at her face, one 
might have thought her sleeping, such was the 
repose of her features. But the bosom of her silk 
robe was stained crimson. On the floor, beneath 
the outflung fingers of one hand, there was an auto¬ 
matic pistol. 

Gilmore took another brief step forward and over 
the butler’s shoulder saw his wife, the light from 
one of the wall brackets flooding across her beauti¬ 
ful face—still beautiful even now. A shudder shook 
his shoulders, as if the hand of some invisible 
giant had seized him in a vicious grip. 

“Your wife has killed herself!” cried Bates. The 
poor woman has shot herself!” 

“Is she dead?” Gilmore cried hoarsely. “I can’t 
—I haven’t the strength—the courage to go near 
her. Bates. Can you tell me if—if my wife is 
dead?” 

The butler was trembling in his agitation, but 
he steeled himself to the ordeal and forced his un¬ 
willing feet forward. Even as he neared the couch, 
he thought one last, weak breath escaped the lips 
of his master’s wife. But he might have been 


100 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

mistaken. His fingers reached out and touched her 
cheek. 

“She is still warm,” he gulped; “of course she 
would he—so soon after. But I think she must be 
dead. You see, sir, the bleeding has stopped. 
I understand that is a sign of death.” He shook 
his head slowly. “Yes, Mr. Kirklan, I am sure that 
she is dead.” 

Gilmore collapsed into a chair; head lowered, 
his eyes closed, as if to blot out the terrible sight 
in front of him, he began to sob, brokenly, but 
without tears. A moment later he checked his grief. 

“You’d better call Doctor Bushnell, Bates,” he 
choked. “There—^there might still be a chance of 
saving her.” 

The butler shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid 
not, but there is a way that I’ve heard the doctors 

use-” He shambled to Helen’s dressing table 

where he picked up a silver-backed hand-mirror; 
then he returned to the limp form on the couch and 
held the glass close to her lips. 

“Yes, I know,” Gilmore muttered thickly, watch¬ 
ing him with a fascinated stare. “If any breath of 
life remains, there will be moisture on the mirror.” 
He leaned forward tensely. “What—^what does it 
show. Bates?” 

The butler inspected it briefly. 

“There is no breathing,” he answered; “I was 
right, sir; your wife is quite dead. But I will 
phone for the doctor; that is, I believe, the customary 
thing in cases like this.” 

As the servant moved toward the door, he paused 
suddenly, a startled look coming into his eyes. 




THE OPEN DOOR 


101 


“It is very strange,” he muttered; “yes, very 
strange.” 

Gilmore looked at him dully. “What is strange?” 
he demanded heavily. 

“That—that she should have shot herself with 
the door standing open, sir. If you will pardon 
me, I know that I wouldn’t kill myself—with a door 
open. I would lock myself in. And”—^his voice 
sank to a tense, vibrating whisper—“Mr. Kirklan, 
did you hear a door slamming shut, as we were com¬ 
ing up the stairs just a moment ago?” 

“I heard a noise. Bates, yes. You are sure. Bates, 
that it was a closing door?” 

“Quite sure of it!” cried Bates. “There is some¬ 
thing else, too. If she shot herself, why did she 
scream? My word, sir, don’t you understand? Your 
wife has been murdered!” 


CHAPTER X 


COMMON SENSE 

^y^OUR wife has been murdered sir,” repeated the 
^ butler, with growing conviction of his sudden 
theory. “I am not a detective, but I am sure, were 
it suicide, the door here would have been closed— 
locked. That is only common sense, Mr. Kirklan.” 

Kirklan Gilmore forced his eyes to that lifeless, 
crimson-stained form which so recently had been 
alive, that lovely creature whom he had married 
only three weeks before. His face was set in a 
rigid paralysis of horror, which did not change even 
when he turned his head away and closed his eyes. 

“No, Bates, no!” he cried thickly. “It—it couldn’t 
be. Look! There is the gun beside her, where it 
must have dropped from her fingers after—after she 
pressed the trigger. Your first impression was the 
right one; Helen has killed herself.” 

But the butler was not to he shaken. 

“You heard the scream, sir,” he argued; “the 
scream that sounded before we heard the shot— 
the scream that I thought was Miss Joan’s.” 

“What nonsense!” muttered Gilmore, pressing his 
hands to his temple. “A scream is a scream. Bates; 
they all sound alike.” 

“Of course I was mistaken,” the butler broke in 
hastily. “I had heard Miss Joan scream once, the 
time you were thrown by the horse, and we all 
thought you had been killed. It sounded so much 


COMMON SENSE 


103 


like that, sir, I thought for a moment- But 

naturally it could not have been Miss Joan.” 

“Certainly not,” said Gilmore. “Why do you 
stand there arguing about it? Go call the doctor, 
can’t you? Tell Doctor Bushnell to come quickly.” 

Yet Bates delayed another moment to press his 
theory. 

“Do you remember the scream, sir?” he whis¬ 
pered. “There was terror in it. Not at all the kind 
of a scream, Mr. Kirklan, that one would give 
unless faced with a terrible danger. And people 
do not scream when they are about to shoot them¬ 
selves.” 

Gilmore groaned and tossed his hands wildly. 

“Stop it!” he cried hoarsely. “Get out! Do what 
I tell you—call the doctor. You’re a butler, not a 
policeman. In Heaven’s name. Bates, get a move on 
you.” 

As the butler shambled into the hall, almost ludi¬ 
crous in his haste, he narrowly escaped a collision 
with Victor Sarbella, who appeared from out of the 
darkness, a dressing gown thrown over his pajamas. 

“What’s happened?” demanded the guest of 
Greenacres. “I thought I heard a shot.” His voice 
was strained, excited; there could be considered 
nothing strange in that, for there was certainly 
the promise of sinister, tragic things when the after¬ 
midnight stillness of a peaceable country house is 
shattered by the startling voice of exploding gun¬ 
powder. 

“The younger Mrs. Gilmore is dead, shot ^mur¬ 
dered!” panted Bates, and dashed on past so head¬ 
long that it seemed he would surely tumble down 
the steps. 



104 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


A smothered exclamation broke through Sarbella’s 
lips, and for a brief moment he did not move, 
as he stared toward the half-open door in front of 
him. His face was set into tense lines. From within 
he heard the sound of a groan, and, stepping for¬ 
ward, he saw Kirklan Gilmore, as his body sagged 
in a chair, twisting his hands with such intensity 
that it seemed he must snap the finger joints. And 
then the artist saw the dead woman on the chaise 
longue. 

“Great Lord, Kirklan-” 

The novelist turned, flinging out an accusing 
finger in a wild gesture. “You did this!” he 
screamed. “You-” 

Sarbella’s eyes narrowed, his face hardened. “Be 
careful what you say, Gilmore,” he broke in. “It 
is no light thing to accuse a man of murder.” 

“I say you did it! Helen has killed herself, and 
you—^you drove her to it—^you drove her to her 
death.” 

Sarbella was naturally bewildered. 

“Your butler says your wife has been murdered; 
then you accuse me of it, and now you switch 
everything around by telling me that she has killed 
herself. I don’t know what it all means. What 
has happened?” 

“Bates is an old fool,” muttered Gilmore. “Of 
course she has killed herself. You see—there is the 
gun on the floor, where it dropped from her fingers. 
Any one can see that it was suicide.” 

One might have thought that a look of relief 
came into the face of the artist; he nodded his 
head slowly in agreement. 



COMMON SENSE 105 

“Yes, that’s the way it appears; but if that is 
the case, why is it that your butler says- 

“Oh, what’s the use of discussing my butler’s 
notions. He seems to think that he ought to he a 
detective, that’s all. She killed herself, and”—^his 
voice became edged with bitterness—“it was you 
who drove her to do it.” 

The artist tossed out his hands in an imploring 
gesture. “That is unfair,” he protested. “Perhaps 
her conscience, but am I responsible for her con¬ 
science? Am I responsible for—for her sins?” 

Kirklan Gilmore staggered to his feet. “What do 
you mean—^her sins?” he cried hoarsely. “Am I 
never to know the truth about her?” 

Sarbella shook his head. “Not from my lips,” 
he answered; “she is dead. Let what past there 
was be buried with her. It will be better that way, 
Kirklan—^better for every one.” 

“Who is dead?” came a tremulous question from 
the hall. The novelist recognized the voice of Mrs. 
Gilmore, his stepmother, and leaped forward to 
prevent her entrance. He knew, high-strung, nerv¬ 
ous woman that she was, the gruesome sight would 
be a tremendous, perhaps even dangerous, shock to 
her. 

“You—you mustn’t come in here, mother. Some¬ 
thing-something has happened to Helen.” 

“You mean,” gasped Mrs. Gilmore, clutching at 
the casing of the door for support, ‘ that she is 
dead?” 

“Yes, Helen is dead,” finished Kirklan. “Go 
back to your room, please.” 

“I was awakened by something. I am not certain 
just what it was,” whispered the little, gray-haired 



106 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


woman. “And then there was a shot. You mean, 
Kirklan, that your wife-” 

The novelist inclined his head. “Helen has— 
has killed herself. Bates has gone to telephone 
Doctor Bushnell; there is nothing you can do— 
nothing. Now please return to your room.” 

Mrs. Gilmore began to sob wildly, perhaps not so 
much from grief as from the hysteria of horror. 

“She has killed herself—suicide! Oh, the dis¬ 
grace, the scandal of it; three weeks married and— 
a suicide. I—I knew that something awful would 
happen. It was in the air. I had a presentiment 
of it at dinner. All of you acted so strangely, so 
tragic. Kirklan, what made her do it?” 

“I don’t know,” he answered thickly. “Perhaps 
the reason for it died with her. I—I don’t want to 
talk any more about it, mother; it’s all I can do to 
hold myself together. Won’t you please go back 
to your room?” 

Mrs. Gilmore, making a move to obey him, released 
her fingers from the support of the door casing and 
staggered; thus, unintentionally, she reeled just 
within the door. As she saw the crimson-stained 
form on the longue, a scream tore up through her 
throat. She swayed dizzily, her knees crumpled 
beneath her, and she would have fallen to the floor 
in a limp heap, had not Kirklan reached out and 
caught her in his arms. 

“Sarbella!” he called. “She—^has fainted. I 
knew that would happen if—if she saw it. Won’t 
you help me with her? I—I suppose we’d better 
take her to Joan’s room; she can’t be left alone 
in this condition.” 

Victor Sarbella, rushed forward to lend his as- 



COMMON SENSE 


107 


si stance, and between them they supported the limp, 
gray-haired figure down the hall to the wing of the 
house where Joan Sheridan’s belongings had been 
banished by the coming of Kirklan’s bride to Green¬ 
acres. This, the room of tragedy, had been Joan’s 
until the coming of the house’s new mistress. 

“You’ll find a light button there, near the corner 
of the turn,” directed Gilmore, and Sarbella fumbled 
for the switch. “It’s the last door to the right. She 
—she’s heavier than I thought.” 

As the two men came to the door that Kirklan 
had indicated, there reached both of their ears the 
muffled sound of sobbing—convulsive, hysterical 
sobs. A tremor went through Gilmore. 

Joan’s room being somewhat removed from the 
other part of the house, it was reasonable that the 
sound of the shot might not have awakened her, 
but, being awake, how could she have failed to hear 
it? And she was not asleep! She was awake- 
weeping ! 

Apprehensive terror clutched at Gilmore’s heart 
the terror of a sinister something that he could not 
explain. Was it possible that, after all, it had been 
Joan who had screamed? Sarbella, too, looked 
startled and darted his host a quick, uneasy, ques¬ 
tioning glance. His arms being occupied, Gilmore 
kicked his shoe against the foot of the door, as a 
substitute for rapping. On the other side of the 
panel the choking sobs suddenly ceased. 

“Yes?” 

“It’s Kirklan, Joan. Something has happened, and 
your mother has fainted. We thought we ought to 
bring her here to you.” 


108 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Just—just a moment, Kirk,” came the tremulous 
answer, “and I will let you in.” 

There was a brief wait and the sound of running 
water, as the girl within the room turned on a 
faucet. Then the door opened, and Joan stood be¬ 
fore them. Although it was now almost one o’clock 
in the morning, she had not taken down her hair 
for the night; she had, late as it was, not yet re¬ 
tired. Evidently the sound of running water had 
marked her effort to undo the evidence of tears, but 
her eyes were red and her face was ghastly! After 
a first furtive glance her gaze avoided Gilmore’s 
eyes. 

“You can put her on my bed,” she said in a 
shaking voice, but she did not ask why her mother 
had fainted. 

“Something very terrible has happened, Joan,” 
the novelist said hoarsely. “Didn’t you hear it?” 
He had placed his stepmother on the bed and 
mechanically began to rub her wrists. 

“Didn’t I hear—^what?” Joan asked so faintly 
that her voice was hardly audible. 

“The pistol shot—just—^just a few minutes ago,” 
answered Gilmore. 

The girl shuddered, her head averted. Her hands 
were clenched at her sides, and her lower lip was 
imprisoned between her teeth, obviously in an effort 
to keep it from trembling. She was making a tre¬ 
mendous effort to keep her self-control. 

“I did not hear a pistol shot,” she said, her voice 
still very low. “I did not hear any shot. Why do 
you ask?” 

“Helen has killed herself, Joan; she shot herself 
with a pistol.” 


COMMON SENSE 


109 


There was no startled cry of horror from Joan’s 
lips, as she heard what might have been supposed 
to be her first news of tragedy. But was it news 
to her? There was not so much as an exclamation 
of surprise, not so much as a murmured word of 
sorrow or sympathy. 

Standing a little to one side, Victor Sarbella stared 
at the girl in narrow-eyed, intent interest, evidently 
greatly puzzled by her peculiar attitude. Joan still 
said nothing; almost absently she began massaging 
her mother’s ice-cold fingers. 

“She faints very easily,” she murmured. “It is 
never serious. She will be all right presently. Mr. 
Sarbella, will you please dampen a towel under the 
cold-water tap?” 

“I had been out at the studio,” Gilmore went on, 
the words tumbling out jerkily. “I think I must 
have fallen asleep out there. When I came to the 
house I found that I didn’t have my keys, and had 
to ring for Bates to let me in. My nerves were in 
a bad way, so I asked Bates to mix me a toddy, 
a nightcap. I was drinking it, when both of us— 
Bates and I—heard a scream. Right after that there 
was a shot. Bates and I rushed upstairs to find 
Helen dead; that’s all I know.” 

As his voice trailed off to a dull, lifeless stop, 
Joan gave a start and looked up to take the damp 
towel that Sarbella offered her. She placed it 
across her mother’s forehead; Mrs. Gilmore stirred 
under this application and moaned faintly. 

“I think mother will be all right now,” said Joan. 
“I don’t think it will be necessary for either of 
you to stay. If I need you I will call.” 


110 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Bates has telephoned to Doctor Bushnell. I will 
have him see mother when he comes, Joan.” 

Joan nodded. 

“Perhaps it would be best,” she agreed. “She 
is very high-strung, and may need an opiate. It 
was a tremendous shock to her—of course.” 

Kirklan began a retreat from the room, and Sar- 
bella, after another queer glance at Joan, followed. 
No word was spoken until they had come to the 
room of the tragedy. 

“I can’t stand to go back in there!” Gilmore cried 
hoarsely. “It—it’s all that I can do to hold myself 
together as it is. I think I’ll go downstairs and 
have another drink.” 

Victor Sarhella, frowning so deeply that his eyes 
seemed to he closed, put out his hand impulsively. 

“Don’t do that, my friend,” he murmured; “for 
your own sake—don’t. Liquor will not help any at 
a time like this, and it will look bad, very bad, for 
you to be under the weather at a time like this.” 

The butler came hurrying up the stairs. 

“I have had Doctor Bushnell on the wire, sir,” 
he reported. “He had just got home from a call, 
and he says that he will he here as quickly as the 
car can bring him—a matter of minutes. It is only 
two miles from the village.” 

Kirklan Gilmore glanced shudderingly toward the 
door of his wife’s room. “It doesn’t seem right,” 
he muttered, “leaving her in there alone, but I can’t 
stand to look at her again. I-” 

“There no use torturing yourself,” advised Sar- 
bella. “It is quite certain that she is beyond all 
human help. There is nothing that can be done 
until the doctor comes. Here, man, you’re wabbly— 



COMMON SENSE 111 

all in; sit down here on the top step. Hold yourself 
together the best you can, my friend.” 

Kirklan laughed harshly, mirthlessly. “Stop call¬ 
ing me ‘my friend,’ Sarbella,” he said unsteadily. 
“I won’t have any more of that from you. If it 
hadn’t been for your coming down here, Helen 

would-” He broke off abruptly, as he realized 

that Bates was within earshot, and that very little 
missed the butler. 

Sarbella shrugged his shoulders, but made no 
verbal response. The house had become intensely 
still again. From the foot of the stairs there was 
the steady, measured ticking of the tall clock on 
the first floor, as the long pendulum moved to and 
fro. Gilmore sat down on the steps, shoulders 
slumping forward, as he laced and unlaced his 
fingers. 

Why had Joan been sobbing in her room? What 
was the reason for her strange behavior? Why 
had her face been so ghastly pale, even before he 
had informed her of Helen’s death? 

He pondered this. 

“Listen!” said Bates, breaking the uneasy silence. 
The other two men jerked into an attentive attitude. 
There came to their ears the hum of a powerful 
motor. An instant later an automobile horn blasted 
the stillness in brief announcement. Doctor Bush- 
nell had arrived. 



CHAPTER XI 


BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 

T he butler hurried stumblingly down the steps 
to admit Doctor Bushnell, who had been the 
Gilmore family physician for almost a dozen years; 
he swung open the door, as the doctor was stepping 
briskly across the porch. 

“You got here in a hurry, doctor,” said Bates. 
“It happened upstairs. Mr. Kirklan is up there 
now—at the top of the steps. She’s dead; I held a 

mirror to her face and- 

“Yes, so you told me over the telephone,” broke 
in Doctor Bushnell; he was a tall, crisp man, with 
a pair of gray eyes looking out from behind a pair 
of rimless spectacles. 

“She-” began Bates again. 

“This is no time for conversation, my good man,” 
the doctor again interrupted firmly, but not im¬ 
patiently. “You can talk later.” He started swiftly 
for the stairs. 

But Bates was not to be shaken off so easily. 
“You didn’t give me a chance to finish telling 
you over the phone,” he said, blocking the way. 
“Mr. Kirklan says she killed herself, but I know 
better. She was murdered.” 

Doctor Bushnell abruptly halted. “Murdered?” he 
repeated. 

“See if you don’t bear me out, sir,” whispered 
the butler. “I’m not a detective, but I’ve got com¬ 
mon sense enough to know- 




BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


113 


The physician shook loose Bates’ fingers. “There’ll 
be time enough for that, Bates. Just now there’s 
a chance—a bare chance—^that you are mistaken, 
and that she is still alive. If there is any chance* 
of saving her, there must be no wasted time.” 

Surgical kit swinging at his side, the doctor 
bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time. Kirklan 
Gilmore was waiting just outside the door of Helen’s 
room. The doctor offered his hand, and they clasped 
silently for a brief moment, the grasp of the physi¬ 
cian warm-hearted, sympathetic. 

“Am I too late, Kirklan?” 

The novelist bowed his head. “Yes, Doctor Bush- 
nell, you are too late. She is dead—I am sure she 
is dead. She shot herself with a pistol. She is— 
there.” He pointed to the partly open door. “It— 
it won’t be necessary for me to—^to come in there 
with you?” 

The doctor gave a pitying glance at the young 
husband, whose wife had been taken from him 
after three weeks of marriage; he saw the haggard, 
drawn face, the horror-filled eyes, the twitching lips. 

“It will not be necessary,” he answered quietly. 
“Perhaps you had better wait downstairs. If I need 
you I will call.” 

“T-thanks,” gulped Gilmore. 

Doctor Bushnell, after a glance at Victor Sarbella, 
who, of course, was a stranger, passed on into 
the room and closed the door behind him. Being 
a doctor, he was steeled to death, but he was hardly 
prepared for the sight that shocked his eyes. De¬ 
spite himself, his nerves reacted with a tingle of 
horror, and a gasp slipped through his lips. 

Quickly he bent over the still form of the beau- 


114 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


tiful woman; it was the first time that he had seen 
Kirklan’s wife, although gossip of the surprisingly 
sudden unannounced marriage had reached the 
near-by village. Little more than a cursory ex¬ 
amination was necessary to verify the butler’s 
earlier findings. Helen Gilmore was dead; she had 
succumbed to that bullet wound which the doctor 
found in the chest, just a little below the left 
armpit. 

“She was murdered!” The butler’s statement 
came back to Doctor Bushnell with a rush of con¬ 
viction now. It would have been almost impossible 
for such a wound to have been self-inflicted. For 
the woman to have shot herself would have meant 
the holding of the weapon at a decidedly awkward 
and unnatural angle. Possible, perhaps, but highly 
improbable from a medical viewpoint. 

Doctor Bushnell’s face had become grim. Swiftly 
he unfastened the surgical kit and found a long, 
slender probe, with which he might approximate 
the direction that the bullet had taken. Ranging 
downward! Still further argument against the 
wound having been self-inflicted. 

“Bates was right!” muttered the physician. “I 
wonder how he knew.” He stepped back and 
glanced at the gun on the floor. He had, of course, 
noted that the moment he had entered the room, and 
he took it at the moment as proof of suicide. The 
pistol had eveiy appearance of falling from the hand 
flung out over the edge of the lounge. 

“Who could have killed her—^this beautiful bride 
of three weeks?” he said under his breath. As a 
physician, as a surgeon, he knew the right thing to 
do at the right time, but now a feeling of helpless- 


BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 115 

ness came over him. Obviously something had to 
be done. What? 

As he stood there in the center of the floor, staring 
down at the dead woman, debating, there came to 
his ears the sound of a muffled cough in the hall. 
He took a quick step toward the closed door, more 
than half suspecting that some one was eaves¬ 
dropping. 

“Oh, it’s you. Bates,” he grunted, as he saw the 
butler. “You might as well come in; there are some 
questions I wanted to ask you, anyhow.” 

“Yes, sir,” murmured Bates, entering the tragedy 
chamber willingly enough. “Have you discovered 
anything, doctor?” 

“Did you examine the body. Bates?” 

The butler shivered. 

“Examine it?” he whispered. “Heaven, no! I 
held a mirror close to her face; I touched her with 
my hand; that is all. Why did you ask me that, 
sir?” 

“I wondered what made you so certain that it 
was murder. Bates, and whether you had observed 
the nature of the wound which caused her death.” 

“It wasn’t that made me know it was murder; 
it wasn’t anything more than just common sense. 
The door into the hall was open when we found 
her.” 

“The door was open? What significance was 
there in that?” 

“Would you shoot yourself, sir, with a door stand¬ 
ing half open?” 

Doctor Bushnell stared and, after considering this 
question for a moment, shook his head. “No,” 


116 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


he answered slowly; “since you mention it, I don’t 
suppose I would.” 

“And you wouldn’t scream, doctor, while you 
were getting ready to pull the trigger,” added the 
deductively inclined butler. 

“You mean-” 

“I mean, sir, that she screamed horribly. Oh, 
it was a terrible scream, the kind of a scream that 
makes a man’s blood turn to ice.” Bates made no 
mention of his first impression that the scream 
might have been that of Miss Joan; he had, in his 
own mind, entirely rejected that possibility as too 
absurd for any consideration whatever. “As I take 
it, sir, she screamed when she knew that she was 
about to be murdered.” 

“Humph!” murmured Doctor Bushnell. “You’ve 
got quicker wits than Fd given you credit for. You 
figured that out like—well, like, I imagine, a trained 
detective might do it.” 

Despite the situation. Bates gave a faint smile 
of pleasure at this compliment. 

“I have always read a great many detective 
stories, sir,” he said. “I’ve not only read them, I’ve 
studied them. I might say that I am quite a student 
in a way. Had I not waited so late in life to 
develop my mental faculties, I hardly think that I 
should have remained a butler. In fact, I am quite 
sure that I would not.” 

“You’re a queer fellow,” mused the doctor. “What 
else have you deducted. Bates? Can you manage 
your tongue?” 

“Why do you ask that, doctor? If you mean, 
can I keep from talking too much, I can be very 
discreet.” 



BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


117 


“All right, Bates; then I’ll tell you that you were 
right. This woman has been murdered. The nature 
of the wound verifies your guess.” 

Bates looked grieved. “You don’t call it guess¬ 
ing?” His tone was protesting. 

“Well, no, not guessing,” Doctor Bushnell an¬ 
swered slowly. “It had more foundation than a 
guess. Very logical. Bates, reasoning out that busi¬ 
ness about the door. What else can you tell about 
this business?” 

“Very little, sir, very little, indeed. Mr. Kirklan 
and I rushed directly upstairs when the shot was 
fired and then-” 

“Wait a minute. You rushed upstairs? What 
time was this?” 

“A few minutes after half past twelve, very 
shortly before I had you on the telephone.” 

Doctor Bushnell gave the man a quick glance. 
“You had been in bed, hadn’t you? I judge from 
your state of dress-” 

“Quite so, doctor; I had retired early. I was 
sound asleep when I was awakened by the ringing 
of the doorbell. It was Mr. Gilmore; he had locked 
himself out and was trying to get in. He had been 
out at the studio—the old stable, you know, where 
he does his writing. The poor man was quite badly 
upset; he was in a terrible way, and asked me to 
make him a toddy.” 

The physician looked uneasy. “Good Lord, Bates,” 
he muttered, “you don’t think it possible that Kirk¬ 
lan-” 

“Oh, certainly not, sir,” the butler broke in 
quickly. “It was quite impossible. I was standing 
within four feet of him when we both heard the 





118 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


scream and the shot. The glass dropped out of 
his hand, and he stood there like a man of stone, 
his hands shaking, his face white as a sheet of 
paper. He said: ‘My God, Bates, what’s that?’ And 
while we were both still listening, there came the 
shot; it must have followed the scream by half a 
minute, perhaps not so long as that. We both 
dashed up the stairs, I in front. While we were 
mounting the steps, sir, we both heard a sound that 
seemed to be the slamming of a door.” 

“Ah!” exclaimed the doctor. “The slamming of 
a door? Then you think that some one in the 
house-” 

“That would be but guessing, doctor. The door 
©f this room was open, the light was burning, and 
I was the first to see her. It seemed to me—I can¬ 
not be sure—that she took her last breath while 
I was watching her. The bleeding had stopped. 
Am I right, doctor, in supposing that the flow of 
blood stops when death takes place?” 

Doctor Bushnell nodded. “Yes, when the heart 
action ceases,” he answered. “What else. Bates?” 

“The gun was just as you see it now, sir. It 
was only natural that Mr. Gilmore should be so 
firm in his belief that she had taken her own life. He 
was not even convinced when I mentioned the matter 
of the door and the scream. Poor man, he couldn‘t 
be expected to do any thinking at a time like that. 
He was very much in love with her; he seemed 
fairly to worship her. It was too bad that she 
wasn’t the right wife for him. Miss Joan is the 
one he should have married; she’s only his step¬ 
sister, you know, no blood kin. I guess it nearly 
broke her heart, poor girl, when- 




BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


119 


*‘What do you mean by saying she wasn’t the 
right wife for him, Bates?” broke in the doctor, 
moving toward the bed, where he began removing 
a sheet with which to cover the body until an 
undertaker could be summoned. 

“She had good looks, but she wasn’t his kind,” 
Bates replied. “She’d managed to climb up in the 
world—most likely from pretty near the bottom. A 
servant can usually tell, sir, from watching them 
at table, and a letter came—day before yesterday, 
I believe it was—a most disreputable-looking letter 
it was, sir, to be received at Greenacres, all smudgy 
and dirty. It gave her a shock, too, although she 
tried to pass it off casual.” 

“What the servants don’t know!” murmured the 
doctor under his breath, and then added, aloud: 
“You think there may have been some connection 
between the letter and the murder?” 

“As to that, I couldn’t say. Doctor Bushnell, but 
she was much agitated, it seemed to me. I would 
say that it must have been written by some very 
low person, a most peculiar sort of a missive for 
Mr. Kirklan’s wife to be getting.” 

“All these little scraps of information may prove 
valuable. Bates,” the doctor said meditatively. “You 
were pretty sharp on naming it murder. Perhaps 
you have some theory as to who killed her.” 

Bates looked crestfallen; his slender stock of 
theory was completely exhausted, and then he 
brightened. 

“Finger prints 1” he exclaimed. “Perhaps the mur¬ 
derer’s finger prints are on the gun.” He made a 
move to pick up the weapon, but the doctor stopped 
him with a gesture. 


120 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Better not,” he warned. “I understand it’s such 
a simple matter to destroy a delicate thing like a 
finger print. We’d better leave that for more prac¬ 
ticed talents than ours; I’m afraid that all finger 
prints look alike to both of us.” 

“It wasn’t robbery, sir,” offered the butler. “She 
is still wearing some jewelry.” 

“Yes, I’d noticed that. There are no back stairs. 
Bates ?” 

“There are none.” 

“In that case. Bates, it hardly seems likely that 
the slayer could have fled from the second floor 
without you or Kirklan seeing him. That probably 
means that the murderer is still in the house. That 
would not give us a very large list, eh?” 

The butler’s eyes widened. 

“You mean, sir,” he whispered tensely, “that you 
think Mr. Sarbella could-” 

“I mentioned no names, Bates. Sarbella—is that 
the man I saw in the hall when I arrived?” 

“Yes, sir, that’s him; he’s a friend of Mr. Kirk- 
Ian’s, a guest who came out only this afternoon— 
yesterday afternoon it is now, speaking precise. 
He’s some kind of an artist, I believe. I guess he’s 
an Italian, sir. I don’t want to go around accusing 
any one. Doctor Bushnell, but-” 

“But what. Bates? This talk is strictly between 
ourselves.” 

“There was a most peculiar attitude at dinner, 
sir; Mr. Sarbella and her”—pointing toward the 
sheet-covered lounge—“did not so much as speak 
once, while I was serving. They were all on edge 
—even Mr. Kirklan. I didn’t understand it; I don’t 
understand it now. After dinner the younger Mrs. 




BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


121 


Gilmore went very quickly to her room; she was 
pale and nervous. I don’t think I know anything 
more, doctor.” 

“Just one more question, Bates. You and Mr. 
Kirklan were downstairs. Sarbella was upstairs. 
Who else?” 

“The elder Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and her.” 
Again he pointed to the dead woman. 

“What about the other servants?” 

“Elizabeth, the maid, went to Yonkers yesterday, 
sir. She pleaded that her mother was ill, hut I 
doubt it. She don’t know what the truth is, that 
girl; she’s always making excuses, and Mrs. Gil¬ 
more is that soft-hearted she never refuses her.” 

“Or doubts her stories,” added Doctor Bushnell 
with a faint smile. “A most credulous woman, Mrs. 
Gilmore.” 

“Exactly, sir,” agreed the butler. “Mrs. Bogart, the 
cook, does not sleep at Greenacres; she comes every 
morning from the village and goes home again at 
night. And the gardener isn’t employed full time— 
only three days a week.” 

“To me it looks very much like Mr. Sarbella,” 
murmured the doctor and glanced around the room. 
For all that the physician knew there might he 
clews within touching distance, but which he, un¬ 
trained as he was in such business, would never be 
able to recognize as clews. 

“I am going to lock this door. Bates,” he said. 
“No one must enter it without my express permis¬ 
sion. I am going downstairs now. I suppose you 
might as well go to bed.” 

“What’s the use?” muttered Bates. “Not a wink 
of sleep would I get after this.” 


122 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


The key was in the lock; Doctor Bushnell re¬ 
moved it and put it in the outside of the door. 
Then he turned off the lights, stepped into the hall, 
shot the bolt, put the key in his pocket, and went 
down the stairs. He found Kirklan Gilmore and 
Victor Sarbella in the library, the latter sitting in 
a chair, puffing nervously at a cigarette, while the 
novelist paced back and forth like a caged beast. 
At the doctor’s step, Gilmore swung around. 

“You found her dead, of course?” he muttered 
thickly. 

“Yes, Kirklan, I found her beyond all help.” 
Doctor Bushnell gave a quick glance at Sarbella, 
who returned it steadily for a moment with his in¬ 
tense black eyes. “I would like to talk with you, 
Kirklan, privately if I may. Suppose we go across 
the hall into the den.” 

Sarbella inhaled deeply at his cigarette and got 
to his feet. 

“I am going to my room,” he announced; “if you 
need me for anything, I shall be at your service.” 
He moved perhaps three paces toward the stairs 
and then turned; his face was in the shadows, so 
that it was impossible to see any expression that 
may have been on his features, as he asked: “You 
discovered that it was self-destruction?” 

“So it would appear,” answered the doctor, de¬ 
liberately indulging in a deceiving play on words. 
With suspicion pointing toward Sarbella, it was 
perhaps best that the man not know too much— 
just yet. If the artist were guilty, there might 
be something gained by keeping him in ignorance 
that the suicide sham had fooled no one. Sarbella 
moved on up the stairs; Doctor Bushnell would 


BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


123 


have given a pretty penny to have had a good 
look at his face, wondering if he might not see 
there a look of relieved suspense. 

Kirklan Gilmore’s hands fidgeted restlessly in his 
pockets. “You say that you want to talk with me 
privately?” 

“Yes, suppose we go into the den.” 

“That isn’t necessary now, is it? Sarbella has 
accommodatingly gone upstairs to his room.” 

“The den, if you don’t mind,” insisted Doctor 
Bushnell. “I’d prefer taking no chances of being 
overheard.” 

Gilmore’s head jerked up. “I can’t understand 
the reason for all this secrecy,” he muttered; never¬ 
theless he led the way across the hall to the room 
known as the den. It had in former days been 
his father’s favorite room. The physician followed 
and gently closed the door. 

“Sit down, Kirklan,” he murmured. “I dislike 
to add to your strain, but there is something that 
I must tell you. Your wife did not kill herself.” 

The novelist winced. 

“You mean-” 

“Kirklan, it’s murder.” 

Gilmore staggered and dropped limply into one 
of the big leather chairs, face buried in his hands. 
“But, Doctor Bushnell, it—it can’t be that. There— 
there was the gun beside her. That is proof- 

“Only proof of an effort to make murder appear 
suicide,” broke in the physician. “The nature of 
the wound is such as to preclude any reasonable 
thought of self-infliction.” 

“Murder?” Gilmore whispered dully. “Bates was 




124 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


right, after all, then? I can’t understand it. Who 
would have killed her?” 

“Ah, that is what remains in front of us. I am 
in a very peculiar position, Kirklan. I am your 
family physician, but at the same time I am a 
deputy coroner; I accepted the appointment only 
last month. It is my official duty to do everything 
in my power that the law may take its proper 
course. I don’t suppose you know whom the gun 
belongs to?” 

“I do not know.” 

“It is a heavy gun, Kirklan; not at all the sort 
of weapon that would belong to a woman, or that 
a woman would use if it were left to her own 
choice. I have not examined it; I have not so much 
as touched it. I was afraid that I might destroy 
possible finger prints; I thought it best to wait.” 

“Wound or no wound,” muttered Gilmore, “I can’t 
believe that it was murder. Why would any one 
have killed her?” 

“Kirklan, I am going to put a frank question. 
How well do you know this guest of yours, the 
man Sarbella?” 

“Great Lord, doctor, you don’t think that he-” 

“I’m afraid I don’t think anything yet. I’m just 
stabbing around in the dark. Was Sarbella previ¬ 
ously acquainted with your wife?” 

“See here, I don’t want any insinuations of that 
sort.” 

“I am not insinuating, only asking a question. 
Bates thought he noticed a peculiar, strained situa¬ 
tion at the dinner table. Since you and Bates rushed 
directly upstairs, and since that is the only means 
of reaching the second floor, it seems quite certain 



BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE 


125 


that she was killed by some one who is still in the 
house. There is no evidence of robbery. There were 
but five persons in the house—Sarbella, your step¬ 
mother, Joan Sheridan, Bates, and yourself. Unless 
we want to suspect Mrs. Gilmore or Joan-” 

“Oh, that’s too absurd for words,” broke in Gil¬ 
more, making no mention of having heard Joan’s 
sobbing. 

“And that leaves Sarbella.” 

The novelist beat his clenched hands against his 
knees. “Doctor, I tell you that you’re wrong— 
wrong!” he cried. “Helen killed herself; there is 
no other explanation—none! I must tell you some¬ 
thing; my wife asked me for a thousand dollars. 
She must have needed it desperately. Because I did 

not give it to her- What are you doing with 

that telephone?” 

Doctor Bushnell had picked up the instrument 
from the desk and lifted the receiver from the 
hook. 

“I am doing what I must do, Kirklan,” he an¬ 
swered with quiet firmness. “I am calling the 
village police.” 




CHAPTER XII 


“W I G G L y” price 

T he local police authority in the village of Ard¬ 
more was vested in the person of Mr. Hamilton 
Griggs, who held the office of constable, and whose 
most important duty was the enforcement of the 
municipality’s automobile laws. Since the roads 
were exceptionally good, and since Constable Griggs 
received a fee of two dollars and fifty cents for 
each arrest resulting in a collected fine, he found 
the office fairly lucrative during the touring months. 

Constable Griggs—^generally called “Ham” by way 
of brevity—^was a widower and occupied with his 
daughter a neat, green-shuttered cottage on Hudson 
Street. His police equipment was a high-powered 
motor cycle, and his most profitable hours of patrol 
duty were between nightfall and a little past twelve, 
when automobilists were hurrying over the high¬ 
ways, probably feeling more secure in their breach 
of law under cover of darkness. 

It had been a good night for speeders, and “Ham” 
Griggs was mightily pleased with himself; an even 
ten arrests he had made, the fines had all been 
paid, and the neat sum of twenty-five dollars in 
fees reposed in a trousers pocket of his khaki uni¬ 
form. At a quarter of one his motor cycle putt- 
putted stormily into the yard beside the cottage. He 
shut off the engine, locked the ignition, and, going to 
the rear of the house, let himself in through the 
imlocked kitchen door. 


“WIGGLY” PRICE 


127 


Etta, his daughter, had set out a cold lunch for 
him, as was her custom, and the constable lost no 
time in “falling to.” With a chuckle of satisfaction 
he took the little wad of crumpled bills from his 
pocket and tossed them to the top of the kitchen 
table, where he might enjoy the sight of them. 

“Pretty good,” he told himself with a grin. “Let 
’em speed!” 

There was even further reason for jubilation. 
During his patrol of the roads within the village’s 
corporate limits, he had found the deserted blue 
taxi, where Don Haskins, fleeing the New York 
police, had left it to continue his journey to Green¬ 
acres on foot. 

Taking the number, he had reported his find to 
the New York company which controlled an entire 
fleet of like cabs. There ought to be a ten-spot 
from the taxi company, the constable told himself. 
All in all, it had been a most satisfactory night. 

Ham Griggs was a heavy-set, dull-faced man of 
forty-odd; he had, prior to his elevation into public 
oflQce, been a caretaker for one of the summer 
homes which border the Hudson River. Having 
an appetite in proportion to his stalwart build, he 
ate with a gusty heartiness. When the last chicken 
bone had been picked clean, he leaned back in the 
chair, which creaked protestingly on its two rear, 
straining legs, loosened his belt, and took from in¬ 
side his uniform cap, always the policeman’s cigar 
cache, a rich-looking Havana which had been the 
ineffectual peace offering of a gentleman who had 
been doing forty miles per, when Mr. Griggs halted 
him. 

“Ah!” murmured the constable, puffing deeply. 


128 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Betcha this is a twenty-center—^mebbe twenty-five/’ 
He removed it from his mouth and examined the 
embossed band with utmost respect. “A smoke like 
this sure tops off a good feed.” 

His coat unbuttoned, his thumbs hooked beneath 
the straps of his wide-webbed suspenders, he con¬ 
tinued smoking until the electric light seemed to be 
swimming in a sea of smoke. And then the tele¬ 
phone rang, a loud, insistent jangling from the 
front of the cottage. Ham Griggs’ chair thudded 
down on all fours with such force that there was 
the sound of cracking wood. 

“Now I wonder what that is?” he grunted. Ard¬ 
more being a quiet, law-abiding community, a night 
call for the constable was highly unusual. He 
lumbered hastily to his feet and plunged toward 
the sitting room, where the telephone was located. 
The bell was still ringing when he took down the 
receiver. 

“Hello!” he shouted into the transmitter. “Hello 
there! Dang it, central, quit ringin’ in my ear; 
you’ll bust an eardrum!” Possibly in retaliation 
of this impolite tone, the switchboard operator 
buzzed again. 

“Constable?” 

“Yeah, this is Ham Griggs.” 

“Doctor Bushnell speaking, constable. There’s 
been a tragedy at Greenacres—^the Gilmore place, 
you know. Can you come at once?” 

“Whatcha mean—^tragedy, doc?” 

“There’ll be time enough for that when you get 
here,” came the voice of the village physician. 

‘T gotta right to know,” grunted Ham Griggs. 


“WIGGLY” PRICE 129 

“Let’s have it.” His voice was officially important 

now. “Y’mean robbery?” 

“Worse than that, constable. Oh, I might as 
well tell you—Kirklan Gilmore’s wife has been 
killed. It is—^murder.” 

“Good Lord, murder!” cried Griggs, his voice 
rising thunderously loud. “Who killed her, doc? 
Who done it?” 

“That’s our job, constable, to find out. You’ll 
come right away?” 

“Sure I will. Whatcha think I’m constable 

for? How—how was she killed?” 

“Shot, Griggs; let’s not waste any more time 
talking now.” And at the other end of the 
line the receiver clicked, breaking the connection. 

It was not surprising that the persistent ringing 
of the phone and Ham Griggs’ loud-pitched voice 
should have aroused the constable’s daughter, Etta. 
She appeared in the sitting-room doorway, her 
hair done up in curlers, her rather plain face 
a glistening smudge of cold cream. 

“What’s happened, fawther?” she demanded, her 
none-too-plump arms hugged tight across her flat 
chest. 

“Ain’t I told you to cut out that ‘fawther’ 
stuff?” growled Ham Griggs. 

“Yes, fawther, but did you say somebody had 
been murdered?” 

“That’s the size of it,” nodded the constable, 
beginning to button his coat. “Out to Greenacree 
—Gilmore’s new wife, so Doc Bushnell says.” 

“My Gawd!” gasped Etta Griggs, momentarily 
forgetting her little book, “Social English.” Etta 
was ambitious for herself; she was engaged in 


130 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


writing a play, and wished to equip herself to 
move as one of the elect in literary circles, when 
the moment of her great success should arrive. 
“The—the author’s wife? Why, they ain’t—^they 
haven’t been married a month yet! Did he kill 
her, fawther?” 

Ham Griggs was impatient of questions, eager 
to be off, but his daughter barred the sitting 
room’s one door, and he knew that the only 
way to pass without absolute violence was to 
answer her. 

“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout it,” he grunted, 
“except what the doc told me, which was precious 
little. Seems like she’s been shot. I dunno who 
done it. Now get outta the way, Etta, an’ let 
me get goin’.” 

“Chances are he did,” mused Etta; “we literati 
are so temperamental, so given to quick, strong 
passions.” 

“You just natcherally make me sick!” snorted 
her father, as he plunged past her. A moment 
later she heard his motor cycle bark into life 
and, with staccato explosions from the exhaust, 
race out of the yard and down the quiet village 
street. 

Etta’s role in the Greenacres tragedy was more 
important than one might imagine it could be, 
and for no greater reason than that she aspired 
to be a playwright. Her play had reached its 
fourth and final act; with a few minor correc¬ 
tions here and there, it was ready for its journey 
to New York. She had not the slightest doubt 
of its immediate acceptance and production. 

She realized in a vague sort of way the power 


“WIGGLY” PRICE 


131 


of the newspapers; and, little knowing into how 
many independent departments a great daily is 
divided, she was suddenly seized with an idea— 
a great idea. The murder of Mrs. Gilmore, she 
reasoned, was news, stupendous news; Kirklan 
Gilmore was a famous novelist. The newspaper 
which she read regularly would, as she saw it, 
naturally feel grateful to her for giving them 
firsthand information regarding the tragedy. It 
would serve as a pleasant introduction to the 
editor of that great metropolitan publication, would 
tincture the review of her “play” with a personal 
kindliness. 

What queer notions people do get into their 
heads! But the merit of her idea is neither 
here nor there; the important thing is that Etta 
Griggs did call the office of The Morning Star, 
and she was thus responsible for the appearance 
on the scene of a certain news hound named 
Jimmy Price, sometimes more intimately known 
as “Wiggly.” 

The news-gathering stalf of The Star is a high- 
pressure, hectic organization; one would wonder 
how they could get out an intelligent paper in 

the midst of such a mad scramble. It was 

nearing press time for the final edition; Scoggins, 
the city editor, was bellowing at the top of his 
nasal voice; the copy desk was railroading a 
last hatch of late news matter; the assistant 

make-up man, who is one of the important gentle¬ 
men who keep the type in the right columns, 

was screaming frantically about something of which 
no one except himself seemed to know anything, 
and, from the way the office boys were sliding 


132 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Lack and forth across the floor, one might have 
thought the city room was the skating rink of 
an insane asylum. 

And then, with a breathless suddenness—silence! 
In newspaper parlance, “the paper had been put 
to bed.” From the street below there soimded 
the blump-biump of a flat-wheeled surface car 
journeying along Park Row. Scoggins, the city 
editor, gave a look at his news schedule, sighed, 
and jerked off the shade which protected his 
eyes. 

“There’s not a live piece of local news in the 
whole darn paper!” he muttered. “Here, Milne, 

take the desk; Fm going home, and-He took 

a last survey around the long, paper-cluttered city 
room, and saw Jimmy Price, who was cognizant 
that he had incurred the displeasure of the gods, 
trying to do a quick sneak out. 

“Hey, you, Price!” he bawled. 

Jimmy Price turned, and it became apparent 
why he had been saddled with the nickname 
of Wiggly. In moments of inner excitement or 
of strong emotion, Jimmy’s protuberant ears be¬ 
came animate objects. They were unruly ears, 
always wiggling when he least wanted them 
to; it seemed that Jimmy had absolutely no 
control over his ears. They were wiggling now, 
for their owner sensed what was coming. He 
turned slowly and retraced his steps toward the 
city editor’s desk, which was set up on a plat¬ 
form. The boys called it “the throne,” and cer¬ 
tainly no monarch ever held more despotic sway 
than Caleb Scoggins, the city editor of The Star. 

Scoggins was a good city editor, but he was 



“WIGGLY” PRICE 


133 


a man of strong prejudices, and he was prejudiced 
against Wiggly’s animated ears. It annoyed him 
to look down the room and have a perfectly 
good idea take sudden flight, as he was forced 
to stare in fascinated, almost hypnotized, interest 
at a pair of ears doing a sort of uncanny dance 
on the side of a man’s head, while the owner of 
those remarkable appendages bent industriously 
over his typewriter entirely unaware of his inno¬ 
cent havoc. Bob Roddy, the star rewrite man, 
that high-salaried word slinger, whose supple brain 
and nimble fingers could paint a column word 
picture with no more material than a five-line news 
bulletin, was, likely as not, to be discovered staring, 
vacant-eyed, at “Wiggly” Price, while the desk was 
waiting for the rest of his story. 

And Jimmy Price was a good reporter, a rattling 
good one, so good, in fact, that Scoggins had 
been at a loss for an excuse to fire him. But 
now he had the excuse. 

“Price,” he rasped, “you fell down on the 
Hammerslaw kidnaping case.” His voice had the 
tone of doom, but Wiggly, except for the renewed 
twitching of his ears, moved neither of body 
nor tongue. He was too wise to point out that 
he had registered this one failure to fifty suc¬ 
cesses, or to remind Scoggins that no reporter 
can bat a thousand in the news-gathering league. 

“Where you belong,” went on the city editor 
with withering sarcasm, “is in a side-show tent, 
along with the rest of the freaks, not in a news¬ 
paper office. As a reporter-He broke off, 

as the telephone rang; mechanically he spun half 



134 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

around in his chair and pulled the instrument 
toward him. 

“Yeah?” he grunted. 

Etta Griggs had chosen this opportune moment 
to call. 

“Is this the editor of The Star?” came her 
sweetest, most cultured tones over the wire. Scog¬ 
gins admitted it with a grunt. 

“This is Miss Griggs, the playwright, and I am 
calling to give you a—a scoop, I believe you call 
it.” 

Had it been a busy hour, Scoggins would have 
switched the call over to his assistant; experience 
had hardened him to persons calling him up to 
give him a scoop. Usually they didn’t pan out, 
these scoops. 

“What is it. Miss Griggs?” he inquired with 
a deference that he never used toward his staff. 

“It—it’s very important news,” went on Etta 
Griggs tremulously, almost overwhelmed by the 
realization that she was in conversation with the 
great editor of her morning paper. “There has 
been a murder—a very prominent family, and 
I thought you might be interested-” 

“I should say I am!” exclaimed Scoggins, picking 
up a pencil and poising it over a sheet of paper. 
“What did you say the name was?” 

“Miss Griggs. I am-” 

“Not your name—the murdered person’s name.” 

“Oh, of course! Why, Mrs. Gilmore—^the wife 
of Kirklan Gilmore, the famous novelist, you 
know.” 

Now, as a matter of fact, Scoggins didn’t know; 
he didn’t read the book reviews, and Gilmore, 




“WIGGLY” PRICE 135 

while he had written a selling book, wasn’t quite 
so famous as Etta imagined. 

“You say she has been murdered. Miss Griggs?” 
he purred. “Where did this happen?” And, wait¬ 
ing for the reply, he put his hand over the 
transmitter as he said out of the corner of 
his mouth to Milne, his asistant: “Who the devil 
is Kirklan Gilmore, the novelist? Get the clippings 
on him outta the reference room. Picture of his 
wife, if there are any. Hurry! We gotta stop 
the presses and make a lift, if this pans out.” 

“Ardmore — Ardmore-on-the Hudson,” went on 
Etta. “The Gilmore estate is Greenacres. She 
was shot—killed. Poor thing, they’d only been 
married three weeks, too.” Scoggins’ eyebrows 
went up. In a flash he visualized the headline, 
“Bride of Three Weeks Slain.” 

There followed a few rapid-fire questions in 
which the city editor had all available information. 
The constable had been smnmoned—Etta neglected 
to state that this constable person was her father 
—and the village physician, a Doctor Bushnell, 
was at the house. 

“Fine!” exclaimed Scoggins with that inhuman 
delight with which some city editors receive the 
news of a crime. “If you will give your name, 
I will have the business office send you a check, 
and then-” 

“Oh, no!” cried Etta. “But I expect that my 
play will be coming out soon, and-” 

“Certainly—certainly,” Scoggins murmured me¬ 
chanically and snapped the receiver to its hook. 
“She’s a nut,” he grunted. “Gotta verify this 
story before we can use it, but I guess it’s safe 




136 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


enough at that. You, Kinsella, call up the Gilmore 
place, Ardmore, and ask for Doctor Bushnell. 
You, Roddy, bat out a coupla sticks for a lift 

on page one, and-” His eyes roved over the 

now empty city and then back to Wiggly Price, 
who had withdrawn a few feet from the desk. 
In the pressure of the moment he forgot that 
he had been about to fire the reporter with 
the animated ears; he only remembered that he 
needed a good reporter for a good story, and 
that Jimmy Price was a good reporter. He slid 
open a drawer of the desk and tossed over 
a roll of bills. 

“Here’s a hundred dollars for expense money. 
Price,” he snapped crisply. “Gilmore place, Ard¬ 
more. Author’s wife—bride three weeks—^mur¬ 
dered. May have to take taxi. Get pictures— 
lots of pictures. Gotta hunch this is a good 
yarn.” Wiggly’s ears wiggled violently, probably 
registering his delight that the catastrophe of being 
fired had been so narrowly and unexpectedly 
averted, but Caleb Scoggins had turned his vigorous 
attention to other details of the new story—the 
only real piece of local news during the night— 
and he did not notice. 

Price grabbed up the expense money and left the 
city room with discreet swiftness. Less than five 
minutes later he was in a taxicab, speeding out 
Broadway toward Greenacres. 



CHAPTER XIII 


WHAT DID JOAN KNOW? 

A waiting the arrival of the constable, Doctor 
Bushnell was still in the den of the Green¬ 
acres house, while across from him Kirklan Gilmore 
sat, like a man dazed, in one of the great leather 
chairs, staring vacantly into space. He had not 
spoken for almost five minutes. 

“So you had to call in the police,” he muttered 
bitterly, breaking the silence. “They’ve got to 
come, snooping through the house, prying into 

things, asking questions, badgering, bullying-” 

“You’re taking the wrong attitude, Kirklan,” 
the doctor broke in gently. “I know how you 
feel, of course; you abhor the legal procedure, 
but a crime has been committed, and the law 
must function. You would not want your wife’s 
murderer to escape, would you, no matter what 
the price?” 

“I can’t believe yet, doctor, that it was what 
you claim—^murder,” protested the novelist with 
a shudder. “Your opinion is based on—^just exactly 
what?” 

“The nature of the wound, Kirklan. Look, here 
is my pipe.” He produced from his pocket a 
straight-stemmed brier, holding it by the bowl. 
“Let us suppose that this is the pistol. Your 
wife is right-handed? Yes, I supposed as much; 
imagine any person holding a gun in the right 
hand and reaching halfway around their body 



138 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


and shooting themselves under the left armpit. 
You can see how absurd that is; even supposing 
she might have been left-handed, it is almost as 
ridiculous.” 

Gilmore debated this a moment. 

“I suppose you consider that incontrovertible— 
medically,” he argued, “hut Fve got a theory to 
suggest. Fve had to study things a bit along 
such lines—the material for my books, you know. 
My last was a mystery story. 

“Helen was lying on the lounge. The gun 
was heavy, hard for a woman to handle, as you 
have said. Suppose she used both hands in firing 
the pistol; one to support it in range, and the other 
to press the trigger?” 

Doctor Bushnell toyed with his pipe for a mo¬ 
ment; absently he filled it from a chamois pouch 
and struck a match. 

“It’s possible,” he admitted, and then he shook 
his head, adding, “but improbable. I did work 
at Bellevue in New York, while I was at medical 
school. Naturally we had some suicide cases. 
It’s a quer thing, but most of the men shot 
themselves through the head, while the women 
aimed for their heart—perhaps a natural horror 
of disfiguring their faces. But, looking back, none 
of them tried to reach the heart from so far 
around at the side. Always in front. Adding 
weight to the medical aspect of it, there are 
those very significant points that Bates raised. 
Quite an intelligent fellow, that butler of yours. 
He’s been in the family a long time, hasn’t he?” 

“More than twenty years, I think; he was much 
attached to my father.” 


WHAT DID JOAN KNOW? 


139 


“It is significant, Kirklan, that you and Bates 
found the door standing open. And the scream—ah, 
there’s the big point! Why did she scream? 
Not because she had reached a decision to end 
her life. As I consider the matter, this man 
Sarbella- 

“No!” 

“Is your friendship for him so blind as that, 
Kirklan? Stop and think things over, man; on 
the second floor, when the shot was fired, were 
only your stepmother, your stepsister, and Sar¬ 
bella. It must have been one of the three; there 
is no other explanation!” 

As his voice came to a dramatic pause, there 
was a rap at the door. 

“Doctor Bushnell,” came the voice of the butler 
from the other side of the panel, “will you answer 
the telephone? There is a call for you.” 

The doctor looked puzzled. “There was no ring,” 
he said. 

“That is an extension,” explained Gilmore. “There 
is no bell in this room.” 

“Oh, I see,” murmured the physician, and, lean¬ 
ing across the table, he pulled the telephone 
toward him. 

“Yes, Doctor Bushnell speaking,” he said. “Who 
—what? Where did you get that information?” 
A pause. “Yes, that is true, but there will be 
no further information—positively none. You are 
quite wasting your time in pressing these ques¬ 
tions.” He cut the conversation short by clicking 
down the receiver. 

Gilmore lifted his haggard face in a glance 
of curiosity. “Who was it?” he wanted to know. 



140 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


**The Star. It is really quite amazing how 
quickly the newspapers get hold of a thing like 
this. Probably the telephone girl at the village 
gave them the tip.” 

“The newspapers!” groaned Gilmore. “The 
scandal they will make of it. Did—did you tell 
them that it was murder?” 

The doctor nodded. 

“They were already in possession of that report, 
and I verified it. There’s no use kicking against 
the pricks, Kirklan; the best that could have 
been done was to keep it out of the papers for 
a few brief hours. There will have to be an 
inquest, you know; that is a public hearing. It’s 
an ugly situation, but there’s no escaping it.’' 

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” muttered the 
novelist, “hut I want it expressly understood that 
no reporters are to he admitted to my house.” 

“They won’t bother you until daylight, I sup¬ 
pose,” said Doctor Bushnell, little thinking that 
already a madly speeding taxi was bearing Wiggly 
Price toward Greenacres. “They’ll descend upon 
you in droves with morning, and they’re a per¬ 
sistent lot, those chaps.” 

The two men in the den again lapsed into 
silence; Gilmore’s muscles twitched spasmodically. 
It looked as if he were about to crack under the 
strain. 

“I think I will give you an opiate of some 
sort and then get you in bed,” the physician said 
gently. “You’ve about gone your limit. I’m afraid.” 

“That reminds me of something,” Gilmore told 
him. “My stepmother fainted; I promised to send 
you to her when you came. And as for my 


WHAT DID JOAN KNOW? 


141 


going to bed—^my room is next to Helen’s. You 
couldn’t expect me to spend the rest of the night 
there. But I will let you give me something, 
doctor; I feel as if my body were about to separate 
into atoms. Yes, give, me something that will 
let me forget-^for just a few hours.” 

Doctor Bushnell reached for a compact pocket 
medicine case and selected a vial containing some 
small white pellets. 

“The constable ought to be here any moment 
now,” he said. “Not that I expect Ham Griggs 
is going to be of very much help to us; catching 
speeders is about the limit of his abilities. But 
he had to be notified, and in the morning we’ll 
notify the district attorney’s office. We may get 
an intelligent investigation from that source. Ah, 
that must be Griggs now.” 

There had reached his ears the sound of the 
constable’s approaching motor cycle. 

“I’ll ‘have Bates let him in and keep him waiting 
downstairs until I have a look at Mrs. Gilmore. 
One of these pellets, Kirklan, and you’ll be falling 
asleep in no time.” 

The doctor left the den and went upstairs, after 
pausing in the hall to instruct Bates that Ham 
Griggs should wait; passing the tragedy chamber, 
he tested the door and found it, as he had left 
it, locked. Then he made his way around the 
hall toward the room which, from previous pro¬ 
fessional calls, he knew to be the elder Mrs. 
Gilmore’s. Kirklan had neglected to tell him that 
she had been taken to Joan’s part of the house. 

Ahead a gleam of light sliced out into the hall 
from a half-open door, the room occupied by 


142 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Sarbella. The doctor’s footsteps were audible, and 
the guest of Greenacres appeared at the opening. 

“You were looking for me?” he inquired. 

Doctor Bushnell paused, wondering if Sarbella 
had left the door open in an effort to keep in 
touch with what was going on; a guilty man, 
it was reasonable to presume, would be nervously 
anxious to know the progress of the investigation, 
to be forewarned of any suspicion turning in his 
direction. 

“No, Mr. Sarbella, I am on my way to Mrs. 
Gilmore’s room. Kirklan has just told me that 
she fainted some time since.” 

“Oh, but you’re in the wrong part of the house, 
doctor; Gilmore and I took his stepmother to Miss 
Sheridan’s room.” He paused for a moment, and 
then added: “It has been a terrible night for 
all of us.” 

“It is a very puzzling business,” murmured 
Doctor Bushnell. 

“Very,” nodded Sarbella. 

“How long have you known the—ah—the dead 
woman?” 

The artist hesitated briefly, and when he did 
reply gave the shrewd doctor the impression of 
carefully chosen words. 

“I met her last evening for the first time,” he 
said. “I had never met her before.” 

“During the dinner,” pursued the physician, 
watching the man’s face closely, “did you notice 
anything strange?” 

Sarbella shot him a quick glance. “She may 
have been depressed,” he answered evasively. 
“Other than that I can tell you nothing—absolutely 


WHAT DID JOAN KNOW? 143 

nothing. Please do not let me keep you from 
attending Mrs. Gilmore.” 

The doctor had the baffled feeling that some¬ 
thing was being hidden, that Sarbella knew a 
great deal more than he was willing to tell. 
Yet he felt that this was the wrong time to 
ply questions, that he would only muddle things 
until he was better fortified for a cross-examination. 
So he turned and retraced his steps around the 
hall to Joan’s room. 

Even before he rapped, he heard the sound 
of moans, punctuated by a hysterical rambling 
of speech. His knuckles descended upon the panel, 
and Joan promptly admitted him. Mrs. Gilmore 
tossed upon the bed like a woman in physical 
pain. 

‘T am glad you have come, Doctor Bushnell,” 
murmured Joan. “Mother is almost beside herself 
with the horror of it.” 

“Kirklan was so upset that he didn’t tell me 
until just a moment ago. Your mother fainted, 
I believe.” 

“Yes, she was awakened by the shot and went 
to investigate. She saw—her.” 

“I knew something was going to happen!” 
moaned Mrs. Gilmore. “It was in the air. I 
felt it—impending disaster. Every one acted so 
strange.” There she broke off into wild weeping. 
The doctor reached for Mrs. Gilmore’s wrist and 
took her pulse. He decided that it was safe 
enough to administer a soothing hypodermic. When 
this had been done, and the morphia had taken 
effect, Bushnell turned to Joan. 

“What does she mean by saying that she felt 


144 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


something was going to happen?” he asked. “Did 
you notice anything peculiar in the behavior of 

Kirklan’s wife last night?” 

Joan hesitated, twisting her fingers and biting 
her lip. “I—I don’t think she was quite her¬ 

self,” she answered, her voice very low. “She 
seemed greatly worried.” 

“And the guest, Mr. Sarbella?” 

A gasp escaped the girl’s lips, as she gave the 

physician a startled, wide-eyed stare. “Why— 

why do you ask about him?” she whispered. 

“Joan, you are holding back something, and 
you have no right to do that. This atmosphere 
of secrecy, concealment—what does it mean? You 
are a sensible girl, and I feel that I can tell you 
something confidentially. Kirklan’s wife did not 
end her own life.” 

Standing near the foot of the bed, one of the 
girl’s hands clutched at the rail. 

“Kirklan said that—that she had—killed herself. 
So you think that she was shot by some one 
else? What makes you think that?” 

“Without going into the unpleasant details, it 
would have been practically impossible for her 
to have shot herself in such a manner. And 
there was her scream. You didn’t hear it?” 

Joan’s face was white. 

“N-no,” she stammered. “I—I did not hear 

Helen scream.” 

“Scream she did—a terrible scream of terror, 
according to Bates. Added to that, the door of 
her room was found open, and—it was Bates 
who suggested it—^people do not scream when 
they are about to kill themselves.” 


WHAT DID JOAN liNOW? 


145 


The girl’s lips moved soundlessly as if she were 
trying to speak but could not find the words. 

Her eyes refused to meet his, and the physician 
had a baffled, apprehensive feeling that she knew 
something she was very unwilling to tell. Her 
attitude was one of terrified concealment. Was 
she trying to protect some one? Or was she trying 
to protect herself? What did Joan know? 

“But,” she said, after this tense pause, “you— 
you don’t think that Mr. Sarbella- 

Doctor Bushnell lifted his hands in a helpless 
gesture. “I don’t know what to think,” he replied. 
“From what I have gathered there is something 
under the surface and-” 

Before he could complete the sentence Ham 
Griggs’ voice bawled from down the hall: 

“Hey, doc! Where are you?” 

The constable was not disposed to bide his 
time downstairs; officially important, he had brushed 
the butler aside and mounted the stairs in search 
of the physician. Joan drew a breath of relief 
and Doctor Bushnell frowned. 

“That’s Constable Griggs,” he said; “he’s looking 
for me. Isn’t there something you can tell me, 
Joan, that will throw some light on the tragedy.” 

“Nothing,” she answered faintly, “absolutely 
nothing. Only—I feel very positive that Mr. Sar¬ 
bella did not do it.” 

“Doc! Where the thunder are you, anyhow?” 
Again Ham Griggs’ raucous bellow, edged with 
impatience, boomed through the upper hall. The 
physician turned toward the door, having no 
choice but to respond. Joan’s attitude troubled 
him. Why did she express such a positive con- 


146 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

viction of Sarbella’s innocence, the most obvious 
suspect? 

He found Griggs around the turn in the hall, 
stern and grim. 

“This is a fine howdy-do,” Griggs rumbled, 
“keepin’ an officer of the law coolin’ his heels, 
when there’s murder been done, an’ there’s a 
murderer to he put under arrest.” His hand 
moved in his pocket, jingling a pair of handcuffs. 
“Who done it, doc?” 

Doctor Bushnell sighed wearily, realizing that 
the constable was going to be a difficult person 
to deal with. There is nothing more trying 
than official bigotry. 

“That’s the job in front of us—^to ferret that 
out,” he answered. 

“Reckon Gilmore- 

“No, Gilmore was downstairs talking to the butler 
when the shot was fired,” broke in the doctor. 
Briefly he related the facts, as he had found 
them, hut he confined himself strictly to facts, 
and indulged in no theories or suspicions; he 
was afraid to trust Ham Griggs with theories. 

The constable listened, rocking his heavy body 
on his heels and frowning sternly. 

“Hum!” he grunted when the other paused. 
“Where’s the body?” 

“I’ll take you there,” the latter answered. “I 
locked the room—didn’t want anything disturbed, 
of course.” He took the key from his pocket 
and led the way to the tragedy chamber. 

For all of his outward bluster. Ham Griggs 
was inwardly nervous and uncertain, for this was 
his first murder case. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE 

A S Doctor Bushnell unlocked the door and, 
snapped on the lights, the constable was 
close upon his heels, staring at the lounge with 
its sheet-shrouded burden. From beneath the edge 
of the white linen covering, where it almost touched 
the floor, was the automatic pistol. 

“Do you know anything about finger prints?” 
asked the physician. “I thought there might be 
finger prints on the grip of the gun; but I doubt 
it. The weapon was left behind to give the 
appearance of suicide; the murderer, being delib¬ 
erate as that, would hardly have been fool enough 
to leave his signature behind him.” 

Ham Griggs neither admitted nor denied knowledge 
of the finger-print science; as a matter of fact, 
he knew precious little about it, but that did not 
deter him from stepping promptly forward, with 
great show of confidence, and picking the pistol 
up by the barrel. He did have gumption enough 
for that. 

Stepping close to the electric light burning from 
one of the wall brackets, he turned the gun slowly, 
examining the butt plates at various angles. 

“Gotta have a smooth surface, doc, to get finger 
prints,” he grunted, tapping the corrugated rubber 
with his finger. “There ain’t any—no, sir, there 
just natcherally ain’t any.” 


148 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Doctor Bushnell nodded. “You’re right about 
that,” he agreed. 

“Guess I better keep this for evidence,” said 
Griggs, handling it gingerly; ignorant of an auto¬ 
matic’s mechanism, he did not know just how 
easily it might be discharged. 

“Careful there!” warned the doctor. “It’s ready 
for firing; the explosion, you know, ejects the 
shell and throws back the plunger for another 
shot. There’s a safety catch on the side; I’ll 
attend to it for you.” 

Griggs willingly surrendered the gun and glanced 
around the room. 

“Don’t look like there’d been no scuffle,” he 
muttered. “None of the chairs is turned over, 
or nothin’ like that. Don’t seem like there is any 
clews.” 

Doctor Bushnell handed back the gun. “I under¬ 
stand that there are always clews, Griggs. No 
doubt there are plenty of them right here, but 
our eyes aren’t trained for seeing them. We’re 
just overlooking them, that’s all, and I am afraid 
that we shall continue to overlook them. This is 
a job for a detective—a real detective.” 

Ham Griggs looked resentful. 

“Just you hold your horses a little while, doc,” 
he growled. “Gimme a chance, can’t you? You 
don’t expect me to clear this thing up in the 
battin’ of an eye, do you? Mebbe if I’d been 
on the ground long as you have, an’ talked to 
all the folks in the house, like you’ve done. I’d 
have got somewheres by this time.” 

“Yes—^maybe,” murmured Doctor Bushnell. 

“Well, anyhow,” retorted the constable, “I allow 


THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE 149 


to ask a heap of questions. I ain’t gonna stand 
here suckin’ my thumb. Where’s Gilmore?” 

“I gave him an opiate, Griggs; the poor chap’s 
a nervous wreck—naturally. Give him a chance 
to pull himself together. It would be rank cruelty 
to subject him to an inquisition until he’s had 
an opportunity to come out from under the first 
shock. Remember, he had been married but a 
few weeks; a terrible blow, Griggs.” 

“Who else did you say was in the house?” 

“Bates, the butler, the elder Mrs. Gilmore, Miss 
Joan Sheridan, Mrs. Gilmore’s daughter by her 
first marriage, and a Mr. Sarbella, a guest from 
New York. Mrs. Gilmore is in a state bordering 
on nervous prostration, and, as her physician, I 
should certainly refuse to admit her to be ques¬ 
tioned just now.” 

“Seems like to me,” grunted the constable, sus¬ 
picion in his voice, “they don’t mebbe want to be 
questioned. The other three—^they got prostrations, 
loo?” 

“No; there is nothing to prevent your cross- 
examining the others.” 

“The butler feller, you said he was downstairs 
with Gilmore when the gun was shot off?” 

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“An’ that the two womenfolks an’ this—^whatcha 
say his name is?” 

“Sarbella, Victor Sarbella.” 

“Sounds dago. So you say that Sarbella an’ 
the two women was upstairs?” In his slow-witted, 
blundering way. Ham Griggs was arriving at the 
obvious. “That bein’ the case, doc, I guess—hum— 


150 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


I reckon we better have a look at this Sarhella. 
I hope you ain’t give him no chance to escape?” 

“I’ll call him,” responded Doctor Bushnell, “hut 
do you want to question him here?” 

“Best place I can think of, doc; if he done it 
he’ll kinda give himself away by bein’ in the 
presence of the victim.” 

“Up to date,” imparted the physician, “Sarhella 
thinks we believe she took her own life.” 

“That’s good; we’ll spring a surprise on Mm. 
go get ’im, doc.” 

When Bushnell had responded to this command, 
Ham Griggs stepped to the lounge and drew back 
the edge of the sheet, staring at the beautiful 
face below him. He was surprised at the woman’s 
beauty. 

“Sure was a swell looker,” he said to himself 
and drew the sheet back in place. With his 
stubby, thick fingers clasped behind his back, he 
took a turn across the room, so intent with his 
sluggish thoughts that he did not notice the trodding 
of his heavy shoes upon a bit of dark porcelain that 
lay upon the rug near the table which stood by the 
north wall—a bit of porcelain no larger than a silver 
dollar. It splintered beneath his weight, with a 
faintly crunching sound. In his preoccupation he 
did not hear it. 

A moment later Doctor Bushnell had returned 
with Victor Sarhella. Ham Griggs turned and 
stared intently at the guest of Greenacres, who 
had himself well under control. 

“The doctor tells me that you wish to see me,” 
murmured Sarhella. “I am at your service.” 

“You betcha I want to see you,” grunted the 


THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE 151 


constable, motioning to a chair that faced the 
sheet-covered lounge. “What do you know about 
this case?” 

Sarbella let himself into the indicated chair, 
facing the shrouded body without flinching. “Noth¬ 
ing,” he answered steadily. 

Griggs whipped the automatic from his pocket 
and thrust it before the man’s eyes with what 
might have been considered an accusing gesture. 

“Ever see this before?” he demanded, and, when 
Sarbella nodded, he went on with a triumphant 
exclamation: “Oh, you admit it, do you?” 

“Yes,” answered the artist, “I saw it on the 
floor, where it must have fallen from her hand, 
after she shot herself.” 

“She didn’t do no such thing,” the constable 
retorted belligerently. “It was murder.” 

Sarbella’s head jerked up, and his hands suddenly 
froze rigidly about the arms of the chair. Into 
his intense black eyes there came a startled, nar¬ 
row-lidded gleam that Doctor Bushnell, watching 
him closely, decided could have been guilt. But 
he recovered himself quickly. 

“I don’t believe it,” he said flatly. “I begin to 
imderstand. You are hinting that I- 

“Matter of fact, now, ain’t this your gun?” broke 
in Ham Griggs. “No use lyin’; we can trace 
it easy enough.” 

Sarbella did not become angry; he did not bluster. 

“I do not know what has given you this ridicu¬ 
lous idea,” he said quietly, “hut I shall make a 
statement that, in so far as I am concerned, 
covers everything. The gun is not mine; I have 
never seen the gmi until, aroused by the pistol 



152 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


shot, I saw Gilmore’s wife dead. Never in my 
life had I ever seen the woman until I was intro¬ 
duced to her before dinner last evening. It did 
not for a moment enter my mind that it was 
other than suicide. If, as you claim, it is murder, 
I did not do it, and I do not know who did, or 
why. That is all I have to say.” His tone had 
a firm finality that was discouraging to further 
questioning; over the room there fell a silence, 
a silence so tense and absorbed that none of the 
three men heard the automobile that sped into 
the Greenacres driveway and came to a halt be¬ 
neath the portico. 

Constable Griggs reached behind him and drew 
the sheet from the dead woman’s face. Even the 
bosom of her crimson-stained silk robe was exposed 
to view. But no cry of guilty horror came from 
Sarbella; in fact, he seemed a little contemptuous 
of this dramatic play. His face was stonily hard. 

Below, the taxicab bearing Wiggly, otherwise 
Jimmy Price, had arrived at Greenacres, and Wig¬ 
gly, bidding the driver wait, leaped across the 
porch to the entrance. His finger pressed the bell 
button with one brief, curt ring. He waited grimly. 

Now, Wiggly Price was wise in the ways of 
his craft; he knew that in a case like this, 
among such people, a reporter is emphatically 
unwelcome. From countless previous experiences he 
had learned that the big thing is to keep the 
door from being slammed in one’s face. There 
was an old trick that he had used with success 
before; possibly it was chicanery, but the good 
reporter must get the story to hold his job. There 
are times when the exigency of the situation 


THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE 153 


demands a blind eye toward strict ethics, and he 
knew that, unless he made good on the Gilmore 
murder yarn, Scoggins would complete the fate¬ 
fully interrupted business of firing him. 

There had been a day when New York news¬ 
paper men were given neat nickeled and numbered 
badges, issued by the police department to identify 
them in getting past the police lines at fires, parades, 
and the like. They looked official, these badges, 
and, although they had long since been withdrawn 
by the department, Wiggly Price had retained his; 
that word “Police” stamped upon the metal in 
much larger lettering than “Press” had more than 
once been the open sesame for him. 

So when Bates, the Gilmore butler, opened the 
door in answer to the ring, Wiggly Price flipped 
back the lapel of his coat so that the servant 
might be misled by the brief flash and glisten of 
the metal. 

“Fm here on the case,” Wiggly announced briskly, 
knowing full well that if he revealed his true 
identity he would get about so far as “I am a 
reporter.” Then the door would have closed in 
his face. 

Bates readily admitted him. “Doctor Bushnell 
is expecting you?” 

Wiggly, having no notion of committing himself, 
evaded the question. 

“Hum!” he said. “Bad business, I understand. 
How long since it happened? ITl hear what you 
know about it before I see Doctor Bushnell.” 

Thus Bates, who would have let his tongue be 
cut out before he would have divulged so much 
as a grain of information to a reporter, was misled 


154 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


into telling all he knew. Thinking he was talking 
to a detective summoned by the doctor, he pride- 
fully told of his own deductions of murder; he 
omitted nothing, and Jimmy Price’s animated ears 
wiggled delightedly, as he realized how lucky he 
was. 

“Fine!” he murmured. “You’re a pretty good 
detective yourself. Now just between us—strictly 
confidential, y’ understand—who do you think killed 
her?” 

Bates looked around cautiously, and then lowered 
his voice to a mere thread of a whisper. 

“Things began to be queer, sir, after Mr. Sar- 
bella arrived. Mind you, I don’t say that he did 

it, hut-” His voice tailed off meaningly. 

Jimmy Price’s ears moved rapidly—swift thinking. 

“Sarbella?” he said under his breath. “Sarbella? 
I’ve heard that name somewhere before.” And 
then aloud: “Where is the doctor now?” 

“Upstairs with the constable; I think they are 
in the room where it happened. Who shall I tell 
him is here, sir?” 

“Oh, don’t bother about that,” Wiggly Price 
said carelessly. “I’ll go right on up. No, don’t 
bother. Which room ?” 

“At the head of the stairs.” 

“Gee, but I’m one lucky bird!” chuckled Wiggly, 
as he hurried up the steps. “Now what’s going 
to happen? Get pitched out on my ear, most likely.” 

Reaching the top of the stairway, there was no 
need for him to seek further directions. The 
door of the tragedy chamber was not fully closed, 
and there came to his ears the voice of Constable 


THE GIRL IN THE SARBELLA CASE 155 


Griggs, badgeringly insistent, as he sought in vain 
to batter down Victor Sarbella’s brief statement. 

The guest of Greenacres remained calm. “I 
have told you all that I can about the case— 
the murder, as you insist,” he was saying. “I 
have nothing more to say.” 

Wiggly edged closer to the crack of the door, 
peering within, and saw the face of the dead 
woman across which Griggs had not replaced the 
sheet. As he stared, his ears began to wiggle vi¬ 
olently. Without any more hesitation he walked 
into the room. Ham Griggs looked up with a 
hostile and questioning frown. 

“Who’re you?” he barked. “Where’d you come 
from?” 

“Price, Price of The Star** Wiggly murmured 
mechanically, as he continued staring at Helen 
Gilmore. 

Doctor Bushnell took an angry step forward. 
“Mr. Gilmore issued specific instructions that no 
newspaper men were to be admitted,” he said. 
“I don’t know how you managed to get in, but 
I know how you’re going to get out.” 

“Wait a minute!” muttered the reporter. “I’ve 
seen her somewhere. I never forget faces, and 

she- Wait a minute, I tell you, and ITl place 

her. Let a fellow think, can’t you!” He moved 
a little closer, staring at the beautiful features. 
Victor Sarbella had strained forward in his chair, 
and there was something so tense in his attitude 
that Doctor Bushnell signaled to the constable that 
the intruding newspaper man was not to be inter¬ 
fered with for a moment. The constable did not 



156 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

notice that; he seemed little short of hypnotized 
by Price’s animated ears. 

“She must have figured in some story that I 
worked on,” went on Jimmy Price, hardly conscious 
that he was thinking aloud. “And it must have 
been some time ago, or I wouldn’t have so much 
trouble remembering.” 

The doctor made a suggestion that bore more 
fruit than he could have expected. 

“Take a look at this gentleman,” he said, point¬ 
ing to the artist; “you don’t happen to remember 
him, I suppose?” 

Jimmy Price shook his head slowly and positively. 
“I am quite sure,” he answered, “that I have never 
seen Mr.—Mr. ” 

“Mr. Sarbella,” supplied the doctor. 

The effect of that name on Jimmy Price was 
startling. It seemed that his ears would surely 
work themselves loose from the side of his head. 

“Sarbella?” he exclaimed, turning swiftly and 
looking again at the dead woman. “Sarbella? 
Yes, I know her now; she was the girl—^the girl 
in the Sarbella case!” 

A grunt of elation escaped Constable Griggs, 
as he stared triumphantly at the artist; this reporter 
had supplied the missing link between the dead 
woman and the suspect. Victor Sarbella’s body 
stiffened and relaxed, as his shoulders moved with 
a sigh of weariness and defeat. The secret which 
he had guarded with his silence was out. 


CHAPTER XV 


SARBELLA SPEAKS 

N O longer was Wiggly Price an interloper, an 
imwelcome intruder facing eviction; for, in¬ 
stead of asking for facts, he was supplying facts, 
and extremely vital facts they seemed to be. Both 
the constable and Doctor Bushnell, since the Sar- 
bella case stirred no memories, were both eager 
for further enlightenment. 

“Yes,” said Wiggly, “I am sure of it now; this 
woman was the girl in the Sarbella case. I think 
I must have written five or six columns about it; 
queer that I shouldn’t have spotted her the minute 
I put eyes on her, but a fellow’s memory does 
slip sometimes. The minute I heard the name 
just now it all came back to me with a rush.” 

“I knew you was hidin’ something,” grunted 
Constable Griggs, fixing Victor Sarbella with a 
stem eye. “I had a feelin’ that you was lyin’ 
about never havin’ set eyes on ’er until last night. 
I guess you killed her, all right—^that was the 
reason you wouldn’t talk. Guess you thought you 
was pretty slick.” He turned to the newspaper 
man. “I guess it wasn’t nothin’ short of Provi¬ 
dence that let you get into the house just now. 
Queer, ain’t it, how things is always turnin’ out?” 

“My statement,” said Sarbella, his voice husky, 
*Vas entirely true. I had never seen the woman 
until last night—when my friend introduced her 


158 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


as—as hees wife. She—she the wife of my good 
friend!” 

“I guess you think we’re a lotta country boobs 
to swaller a thin yarn like that. Never seen her 
before, huh? That’s likely—I guess not.” 

Doctor Bushnell looked eagerly at Wiggly Price, 
impatient to hear what was meant by “the Sarbella 
case.” 

“Let’s hear what he’s got to say, Griggs,” he 
urged. 

“Sure,” nodded Ham Griggs; “talk right up, 
mister. I guess we’re all wantin’ to hear it— 
except Sarbella. You’ve put us on a hot trail, 
all right, young feller.” 

“For all I know,” said the reporter; “he may 
be telling the truth about never having seen the 
woman before. It sounds reasonable enough, as you 
shall see. 

“The Sarbella case got into the newspapers a 
little over two years ago. There was a young 
chap—handsome kid he was—a violinist. Born in 
Italy—forget what place—and came to New York 
in concert work. His first name”—^he frowned 
meditatively—“I think it was Andrea.” 

“Yes, it was Andrea,” muttered Victor Sarbella. 
“Poor Andrea! And that woman—death was too 
good for her!” 

“He fell in with a girl, a beautiful girl, with 
bronze hair. The attraction of opposites, I sup¬ 
pose; he was dark—^naturally, being Italian. But 
this girl’s past wasn’t as pretty as her face. A 
lot of it is coming back to me now—^the details. 
She’d been raised on the fringe of the underworld. 
Maybe you know what I mean. Her father and 


SARBELLA SPEAKS 159 

her brother had served time. Oh, not her; she 
tried to pull away from that sort of thing. 

Anyhow, the young violinist fell in love with 
this girl, madly in love with her. I think they 
were planning to be married, and then he found 
out the truth about her. How? I can’t tell you 

that, but he did. The note he left behind him 

told that—^liow she had lied to him, deecived him. 

“He went into the bathroom of his hotel and 

shot himself through the heart. You see, this 

young Sarbella came of a very proud family— 
his father related to the nobility and all that sort 
of thing. He couldn’t marry a girl like that, 
and he couldn’t give her up. There was only 
one way he could forget her, and he took that 
way. 

“In brief, gentlemen, that’s the Sarbella case. 
The girl disappeared; the police didn’t hold her, 
since it was so obviously a suicide. I saw her 
at the inquest; she seemed pretty badly cut up 
over it, but—well, you can’t always tell about 
that.” 

“My word!” whispered Doctor Bushnell, aghast. 
“Kirklan Gilmore’s wife was that woman, a woman 
of the imderworld? It seems incredible, prepos¬ 
terous I” 

“Sarbella,” went on Wiggly Price, looking steadily 
at the guest of Greenacres; “had a brother who 
was in Italy at the time of the suicide. This 
brother caught the first boat to New York with 
the avowed intention-” 

“I think that I am the best qualified person to 
finish your narrative,” the voice of Victor Sarbella 
broke in. 


160 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“So you’ve decided to start your tongue workin’,” 
crowed Constable Griggs; his chest bulged im¬ 
portantly. “It is my official duty to warn you 
that anything you may say will be used against 
you.” 

Sarbella waved his hand impatiently. “This is 
an explanation, not a confession,” he retorted. 
“My first statement to you remains true, although 
I admit that I did not tell you all the truth— 
for two reasons. 

“Yes, this dead woman,” his voice dripped with 
bitterness, “was the girl in the Sarbella case. It 
is necessary for me to tell you that Andrea, my 
younger brother, and I were horn and reared in 
Florence. Our mother was American, our father 
Italian. 

“I came to America where I could find a better 
market for my drawings, and I brought with me 
Andrea, who was a violinist and expected to earn 
a great deal of money with his playing. He had 
wonderful talent, Andrea; even so young, his 
playing was attracting attention. Would to Heaven 
that I had left him in Italy. Then that woman 
would never have set his brain on fire, driven 
him mad with the madness of infatuation. 

“It was the first winter that we were in New 
York, and I returned to Florence that I might 
accompany my mother back to America. She, too, 
was to make her home in New York, my father 
having died. It was while I was away that Andrea 
met this devil of a woman. How? I do not 
know, but he loved her madly; the letter he left 
behind for me told me the intensity of his passion 
for her. 


SARBELLA SPEAKS 


161 


“Andrea was young, idealistic; he thought her 
everything that was good, noble. And then there 
came to him a man; a low, common person, who 
was the woman’s husband! 

“You see how she had tricked him? She was 
not the innocent, lovely girl she had led my brother 
to believe. He had thought to marry her—soon. 
The shock of the truth dethroned reason; he could 
not have her, and he could not give her up. There 
seemed to him only one way that he could forget. 

“If I could but show you his farewell letter to 
me, the letter that he wrote a few minutes before 
he fired the bullet through his heart 1” Tears 

came into Victor Sarhella’s eyes, and his voice 
trembled and broke. “Could you read that letter 
of Andrea’s you would understand better. 

“He was my brother, my only brother, and I 
loved him devotedly. News of his death was 
cabled to me, but it was not imtil the boat docked 

in New York that I knew how he had died— 

and why. 

“My mother—Andrea was her very life. She— 
it killed her. This woman, this vampire, killed 

both of them—Andrea and our mother—as surely 
as though she had driven daggers into their hearts. 
And that—^that would have been a kindlier way.” 
He pointed a dramatically accusing finger to the 
couch. “There she is, a murderess, a moral mur¬ 
deress, and she has reaped as she had sown 1” 

Victor Sarbella’s voice came to a pause, 

“All right,” said Constable Griggs, “let’s have 
the rest of it. You killed her for revenge!” 

“A life for a life!” murmured Wiggly Price, his 
ears twitching again, as he thought of a dramatic 


162 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


line for this amazing story that he was to write 
for The Star, “The code of Latin vengeance!” 
Wow! What a whale of a yarn!” 

Victor Sarhella shook his head slowly. 

“Time passes, and the deepest of wounds heal— 
although there may be a scar,” he said. “It is 
futile for me to deny that in my first grief and 
rage against this woman I made bitter threats, 
that I said I would hound her down and make 
her pay. I do not deny that I meant it—at the 
moment; I do not deny that I sought her in 
vain.” 

“But you did find her yesterday” exclaimed 
Constable Griggs. “I’ve heard tell of them Eye- 
talian vendettas. You hadda wait most three years, 
but you got ’er all right. Ain’t no use holdin’ out 
on me no longer. Mister Sarbella; we gotcha, an’ 
we gotcha cold. Mebbe you can get by with that 
revenge business over in Italy, but you can’t 
work it here.” 

Victor Sarbella looked tired, and his face was 
drawn, haggard. 

“Yes, I found her here yesterday,” he nodded. 
“I found her—this murderess—^married to my good 
friend, who loved her madly—as poor Andrea loved 
her. While I had never seen her, I knew her 
from that picture of her that lay beside Andrea 
when he died. Every detail of that face was 
burned into my memory; I recognized her instantly. 
And she—^the name and the family resemblance—• 
she, too, knew me for who I am. 

“Kirklan Gilmore saw that something was wrong, 
but I could not tell him. He was my friend; she 
was his wife; my lips were sealed. I swear 


SARBELLA SPEAKS 


163 


to you that no thought of killing her entered my 

mind, although in the past I had thought many 

times of putting my fingers about her throat 
and- 

“Huh!” broke in Ham Griggs’ grunt. “I guess 
you’d swear to most anything to keep yourself 
from goin’ to the chair. What made you hold out 
on us about knowin’ who she was, if you wasn’t 
guilty?” 

“As I told you a few minutes ago,” answered 
Sarbella, “there were two reasons. One was 
that I wished to spare Gilmore, my friend, the 
torture of the truth.” 

“And the other reason,” said Griggs, “was that 
you knowed blame well it would make things 
look purty black for you. You knowed that it 
would throw suspicion square on you.” 

Sarbella hesitated. 

“At first,” he replied slowly, “I had no other 
thought than that the woman had ended her life— 
driven to suicide by fear, fear that I would de¬ 
nounce her for what she was before her husband; 
but, when the butler kept insisting that she had 
been murdered, I knew that I had a vitally per¬ 
sonal reason for keeping silent.” 

“But little good it did you—^thanks to this feller,” 
exulted the constable, jerking his thumb toward 
the newspaper man. “Victor Sarbella, you’re under 
arrest for-” 

“Be careful, sir—^be careful,” warned the guest 
of Greenacres, his face gray. “The gun is not 

mine, and you will never be able to prove that it 

was. If you subject me to false arrest-” 




164 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Ham Griggs hesitated, glancing at Doctor Bush- 
nell for encouragement. 

“I don’t think you need worry about false 
arrest,” advised the doctor. “An officer has a 
perfect right to hold a man on suspicion. There 
need not be positive proof, and there were but 
three persons on the second floor when the shot 
was fired—Mrs. Gilmore, Miss Joan, and Sarbella.” 

Victor Sarbella leaned forward in his chair, and 
he seemed on the verge of saying something further 
in his own defense, but did not speak. It may 
have been that he realized how useless it would 
be to say anything further in his own behalf. 

The constable dragged from his pocket a pair 
of handcuffs. “Stick out your mitts,” he ordered, 
holding open the steel jaws to receive Sarbella’s 
wrists. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE FOUR CLEWS 

A S Constable Griggs, proud as a pouter pigeon, 
departed with his prisoner. Doctor Bushnell 
replaced the sheet over the face of the dead 
woman, but not until he had looked again at 
the beautiful features, shaking his head, as if 
he could not understand the anomaly of coun¬ 
tenance and character. 

“A—a woman of the underworld! It’s just 
a little hard to believe that a woman with that 
face- 

“On the fringe of the underworld, I think I 
said,” corrected Wiggly Price. “Her associations 
were criminal, but I hardly imagine that she had 
led a vicious life, for that would show.” He paused 
for a moment. “Sarbella told me something about 
her that I hadn’t known before—^that it was her 
husband who came to Andrea Sarbella and told 
him the truth about her. I was just wondering 
if_if she had gone to the trouble of divorcing 
him. It’s a difficult thing, getting a divorce in 
New York State.” 

Doctor Bushnell looked grave. “Sarbella was 
right; she was a vampire. She tricked Gilmore, 
fooled him with her pretty face, as she fooled the 
other one—^young Sarbella. I am apprehensive of 
the effect that this is going to have on Kirklan; 
already he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, 
and when he learns the truth—well, I hope it can 



166 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


be withheld from him until he has had a chance 
to pull together.” He made a move to depart, but 
Wiggly stopped him with a gesture. 

“Just a moment, doctor. You’re satisfied that 
Sarbella did the shooting?” 

The physician seemed surprised by the question. 

“Certainly,” he answered promptly. “There were 
but five persons in the house; two of them down¬ 
stairs, three upstairs, when the fatal shot was fired. 
You don’t mean to tell me that you have any doubts 

-” He broke off, disturbed by the recollection 

of Joan’s evasiveness and perturbation. 

“I’m not saying Sarbella isn’t the guilty man,” 
answered Wiggly; “but I do say that it would be 
next to impossible to have a jury convict him on 
such evidence.” 

“But he was the only person in the house who 
could have any possible motive for the crime,” 
argued Doctor Bushnell. “Revenge, young man—a 
trait that is strong with the Latins, particularly the 
Italian. You don’t for a moment entertain a notion 
that Mrs. Gilmore, the gentlest soul I have ever 
known, or Miss Sheridan-” 

“I admit the motive,” interrupted Wiggly; “I ad¬ 
mit the opportunity, and I admit that, on the face 
of things so far, he is the guilty man. But where 
is the proof—the proof that will convict him before 
a jury? 

“The proof of guilt is somewhere—somewhere in 
this house; it may be right in this room. I have 
been a newspaper reporter for ten years, and a lot 
of my assignments have been crime stories. I did 
headquarters for nearly five years; experience tells 




THE FOUR CLEWS 


167 


me that there are clews, definite and convincing 
clews, that will convict. There are always clews.” 

“Yes, so I have gathered; but the room here— 
there is no evidence of a struggle—^nothing vis¬ 
ible ” 

“The same things, doctor, are not visible to all 
eyes; seeing a clew is one thing, and observing it is 
quite another thing. A newspaper reporter gets to be 
a sort of detective, sometimes he’s a darn good 
detective, and, if you have no objection. I’ll look 
around a bit and see what I can find to clinch the 
case against Sarbella.” 

Doctor Bushnell hesitated. “Kirklan Gilmore gave 
orders that no newspaper men were to be admitted,” 
he said; “still you have rendered valuable assistance, 
and ” 

“And,” added Wiggly with a faint smile, “I’ve 
already got my story. Even if you pitch me out, 
it won’t stop my paper from printing the facts 
that I have gathered.” 

“Yes, that’s true,” nodded the physician, “and 
personally I’ve a profound respect for a good news¬ 
paper reporter. Gilmore naturally shrinks from the 
thought of having this thing blazoned across the 
front page; hut, if he understood the situation, I 
feel sure that he would give you every chance to 
fix the guilt where it belongs. He seemed to resent 
the suggestion I made, that Sarbella was the most 
obvious suspect, but he did not know the past which 
linked the lives of his wife and his friend. 

“The constable is little better than helpless in a 
case like this; his job is catching automobile speed¬ 
ers, and a murder is outside of his experience. It 
was nothing short of luck for Ham Griggs that 



168 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


you happened in and gave him the right tack. I 
intended urging Gilmore to employ a private detec¬ 
tive, but if you can make any progress—^well, I 
shan’t stop you.” 

“That’s mighty decent of you, Doctor Bushnell, 
and, before I start in Sherlocking, I’d like to ask 
you a question or two about the wound. The bullet 
pierced her heart?” 

“No, it did not; I followed the course of the 
bullet with a probe, and it missed the heart by a 
fraction of an inch.” 

, “Good Lord, you don’t mean it! Then death was 
caused-” 

“From the best I can determine, a punctured 
artery.” 

“In other words, she bled to death; isn’t that what 
you mean, doctor?” 

“Yes.” 

“Would she have bled to death so quickly?” 

“That is hard to say—evidently very quickly. 
Both Gilmore and the butler are positive that she 
was dead when they reached the room here. They 
rushed upstairs immediately after hearing her 
scream and the shot.” 

“And that was a matter of less than minutes— 
seconds,” mused Wiggly Price. “The bullet must 
have pierced the aorta, or one of its main branches.” 

“So it would seem, and I see that you know the 
anatomical terms.” 

“Some of them; a reporter has to know a little 
about everything. I was just wondering if perhaps 
she wasn’t still alive when her husband and the 
butler reached the room.” 

“Bates thought he saw the last breath leave her 


THE FOUR CLEWS 


169 


body, but I wouldn’t accept that with absolute 
finality. He is, of course, not a medical man, and 
he might have easily imagined it.” 

Wiggly Price’s eyes searched the room with a 
slowly moving gaze, his animated ears twitching 
faintly. He seemed to be studying the rug, which 
was of a neutral shade; any discolorment, such as 
a bloodstain, would have stood out glaringly, and 
there was none. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that she might 
have been placed on the couch there—after she was 
shot. Yet, with all the profuse bleeding, if she 
had fallen to the floor there would be some signs 
of it. I wonder if you noticed whether she was 
shot while reclining on the lounge, or if the bullet 
was fired while she was standing?” 

The doctor looked bewildered. “Great Heavens, 
man, how could you expect me to know that?” 
he exclaimed with a hint of asperity, suspecting 
that the reporter was trying to “show off.” But he 
was mistaken about that. 

“I feel that we may be able to determine that, 
if we take another look at the dead woman’s cloth¬ 
ing,” Wiggly told him. “There’s the law of gravity 
you know.” 

“Gravity? What’s the law of gravity got to do 
with it?” Puzzled, the physician lifted the sheet 
to permit the reporter’s examination. The latter 
leaned forward for a moment and took note, also, 
that the silk robe was powder burned—in fact, that 
the explosion had been so close as to scorch the 
undergarments as well. 

Wiggly Price pointed to the meandering line of 
dried crimson which dyed the expensive dressing 


170 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


gown almost to the fur-edged hem of the garment. 
“Blood, like water,” he said, “must obey the law 
of gravity and flow downward; she had to be 
standing on her feet for the crimson stream to seep 
down, almost level with her ankles. She was 
placed on the longue by whoever shot her; that is 
evident. Gad, hut she was a beautiful woman, 
wasn’t she? It’s no wonder that men lost their 
heads over her. You know, doctor, I’ve always 
felt sorry for a truly beautiful woman; so many of 
them end up in misery. But that’s neither here 
nor there. The wound is in the side, isn’t it?” 

Doctor Bushnell nodded slowly. “I understand 
now what you’re getting at. Yes, I can see 
that she must have been shot while standing on 
her feet, and either she staggered back to the couch 
herself, or was supported to the couch by the slayer. 
The wound—under the armpit?” 

“The weapon must have been pressed close to 
her body judging from the evidence of burned 
powder. I see that the robe was set on fire, which 
burned quite a hole before it smoldered out. Doctor, 
wouldn’t you say that it was a most unusual place 
for an intentionally mortal wound? Her arm would 
have to have been raised away from her body.” 

The doctor agreed with a tight-lipped “Yes.” 

“Of course,” went on the newspaper man, “she 
might have turned suddenly, squirmed in the slay¬ 
er’s grip—I am taking it for granted that he was 
close enough to have seized her—^but that’s only 
speculation. What became of the gun?” 

“Ham Griggs took it with him. It was an auto¬ 
matic, a large-caliber .44, I think.” 

“Finger prints?” 


THE FOUR CLEWS 


171 


“The butt plates had a corrugated surface.” 

“I see; in that case there would have been no 
finger prints on the gun. Probably wouldn’t have 
been, since the slayer deliberately left the gun be¬ 
hind. Only a very stupid person would have neg¬ 
lected to wipe away finger prints had there been 
any. Hello, what’s this!” 

Wiggly’s foot had crunched against a bit of por¬ 
celain, and he leaned forward swiftly, picking it 
up; it was a rough-surfaced piece of pottery, black 
in color and, as much as he could judge from the 
fragment, had belonged to some convex object of 
which it was a shattered part. 

“A broken piece of something—^but what?” he 
murmured, holding it up for the doctor’s inspection. 

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” answered Doctor Bush- 
nell, who was not greatly interested. He considered 
it a waste of time to speculate over such an in¬ 
significant trifle, when there was murder evidence to 
be looked for. 

“The Hitchcock murder last summer—remember 
that, doctor? It was solved by nothing more notice¬ 
able than a black pin, a mourning pin, and the 
widow of a man whom Hitchcock had ruined, con¬ 
fessed when she was faced with that pin. This is 
larger than a pin, doctor, but, to be frank, I doubt 
there’s much value to it.” He was near a small 
mahogany table by the room’s north wall; the light 
was not very good, the chamber being lighted only 
by wall fixtures, and the incandescent rays were 
softened by parchment shades; but his eyes pierced 
the shadows and saw, on the floor beside the table, 
several other pieces like the one which he held in 
his hand. 


172 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Here’s the answer to it, 
doctor. It’s a vase, a black pottery vase; yes, here’s 
the neck of it.” 

“That might be evidence of a struggle,” suggested 
Doctor BushnelL. “The vase might have been 
knocked off the edge of the table, don’t you think, 
when the woman tried to escape Sarbella’s venge¬ 
ance? She probably knew, the minute he got into 
the room, that his intention was to kill her.” 

Price’s ears wiggled briefly, as he considered the 
matter of the broken vase, and with a dismissing 
gesture tossed down the broken bit which he held 
in his fingers. 

“You may be right,” he agreed, “but it doesn’t 

seem important enough to bother about, but- 

His voice broke off sharply, as he stared toward the 
window directly in front of him; he had noticed the 
sagging curtain, where it had been ripped some two 
and a half hours earlier, when Don Haskins had 
made his surprise entrance into Helen’s room. But, 
of course, Wiggly had no way of being aware of 
the fleeing crook’s existence. 

“Take a look at this. Doctor Bushnell,” said the 
reporter; “this torn curtain. Funny we didn’t notice 
that before; it’s mighty near jerked off the rod.” 

“And what do you make of that?” 

Wiggly’s eyes were meditatively half closed, and 
his ears as well as his mind were active. 

“I’d say one of three things,” he answered slowly. 
“Either the murderer barred Mrs. Gilmore’s flight 
through the door, and she was trying to get out 
the window—^which somehow I don’t take much 
stock in—or the murderer himself came in through 
the window, or, thirdly, that he got out through 



THE FOUR CLEWS 


173 


the window. In the last two cases it doesn’t seem 
reasonable that he would have taken the time to 
shut the window behind him. It seems to me that 
the best thing to do is just store this away for 
future reference. It doesn’t seem to mean much in 
itself.” 

“No, it doesn’t,” grunted the physician. “It might 
not have been torn to-night.” 

Wiggly glanced about the neat, precisely kept 
room. “She was particular about the orderliness 
of things,” he said. “I don’t believe she would have 
left a torn window curtain unrepaired for long. 
No, the curtain was torn to-night; but, as I said, 
we’ll just store that away for future reference.” 

And then Doctor Bushnell made a discovery of 
his own, a half-burned cigarette that had been 
mashed down into the heavy nap of the rug, some 
eight feet from the chaise longue and even a farther 
distance from the door. He gave a brief exclama¬ 
tion, as he pointed to his find. 

“Sarbella is a cigarette smoker; if this is his 
brand-” 

Wiggly Price picked up the cigarette, which evi¬ 
dently had been flattened out beneath the pressure 
of a shoe. 

“It’s a little hard to believe, doctor, that a man 
with premeditated murder in his mind, would walk 
into his victim’s room smoking a cigarette,” he said 
quickly. “For that matter, it might be the murdered 
woman’s cigarette—so many women do smoke ’em 
these modern days.” He examined the flattened 
thing which, as it happened, bore the name of the 
brand. “Cheap—^ten cents a pack. Hardly a 



174 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


woman’s cigarette, I’d say. Perhaps Gilmore him¬ 
self dropped it.” 

“Not Gilmore; I happen to know that he doesn’t 
smoke anything except an occasional after-dinner 
cigar; but I do recall very clearly that Sarbella was 
smoking a cigarette downstairs. If he smokes 
that kind, it’s clinching proof that he is the guilty 
man!” The doctor was becoming quite excited over 
this clew. “Since Gilmore doesn’t smoke them, who 
else could have dropped it on the rug? Answer me 
that!” 

Wiggly took a piece of copy paper from his 
pocket, carefully wrapped the cigarette butt in it, 
and tucked this important, or unimportant, bit of 
evidence in his vest pocket. 

“As you say, doctor, if it’s Sarbella’s brand of 
cigarette it means something—but it’s rather diffi¬ 
cult to imagine a chap like Sarbella smoking this 
cheap fag; just about as hard as it is to imagine 
him walking into this room, a gun in one hand 
and a cigarette in another, ready to avenge his 
dead brother. However, when I get to the jail, 
I’ll see the constable and check up on this. I’ll have 
a look at Sarbella’s cigarette case.” 

Although, as he had just said, it hardly looked 
like the sort of cigarette a woman might be ex¬ 
pected to smoke, he was thorough enough to look 
about the room, and he even went to the dressing 
table in search of any proof that Helen Gilmore her¬ 
self had been addicted to a little puffing now and 
then. But there was no telltale flickings of ashes, 
not so much as an ash receiver. 

Wiggly compressed his lips. 

“You. know, doctor,” he said slowly, “this ciga- 


THE FOUR CLEWS 


175 


rette thing bothers me a little—quite a little, too. 
She isn’t a smoker unless she does it on the sly and 

- Oh, confound it, it just isn’t reasonable that 

this is Sarbella’s cigarette butt. I’ve got a hunch 
that this business runs deeper than we think.” 

Doctor Bushnell gave an impatient gesture. “Stuff! 
You’re trying to manufacture a mystery; the papers 
like mysteries so that they can spread the story 
out over days and days. You’re afraid that the 
solution is going to be too easy, too tame.” 

“Tame?” exploded Wiggly Price. “I can imagine 
nothing more dramatic than Sarbella being the guilty 
man—^beautiful vamp, handsome, talented young for¬ 
eigner, related to nobility a suicide, a brother’s 
vendetta, an unexpected meeting, arranged by Fate, 
at the home of a friend who is a popular novelist, 
and then—revenge! 

“Good Lord, I hope you don’t call a yarn like that 
tame! Scoggins, my city editor, will weep with 
joy if it pans out that way—and probably give 
me a raise in salary, although it’s his burning de¬ 
sire to fire me. But I’m making the guess that the 
cigarette butt that we’ve picked up out of the rug 
didn’t belong to Victor Sarbella.” He paused, look¬ 
ing about the room again. “Electric lights are so 
tricky to the eyes; it’s so easy to overlook some¬ 
thing, some little thing that might be tremendously 
important. It still lacks some time of being day¬ 
light, and I’m anxious to scoot over to the jail and 
check up on this cigarette clew—^make sure whether 
or not it’s Sarbella’s. Are you going to remain 
here for a little while, doctor?” 

Doctor Bushnell glanced at his watch. 

“Jes,” he answered; “at least until the undertaker 



176 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


arrives—probably later. It’s my official duty to 
remain, I suppose.” 

“Your official duty?” 

“As it happens, I am a deputy coroner.” 

Wiggly showed his surprise. “You hadn’t men¬ 
tioned that; I hardly think that even the constable 
realized it. Of course you understand, doctor, that, 
in a case like this, your authority exceeds that of 
any other official. You are the commanding officer, 
so to speak.” 

Doctor Bushnell nodded. “In a way my position 
is somewhat embarrassing. I have been the Gilmore 
family physician for a good many years.” 

“I was wondering if I should be able to get inside 
the house again,” said the reporter; “but, if you 
are the-” 

“Deputy coroner,” corrected the physician. “Doc¬ 
tor Whitestone, the coroner, is vacationing at Sara¬ 
nac Lake.” 

“Anyhow, doctor, you are in charge, and all I 
need is your permission.” 

“Probably it can be arranged,” Doctor Bushnell 
said after a moment of hesitation. “Of course it 
will be rather difficult to admit one reporter and bar 
the others, and there will be a regiment of them 
swooping down on us; but you have rendered val¬ 
uable assistance that makes it very hard for me to 
refuse you. You will let me know, just as soon as 
you have clinched the matter, whether the cigarette 
butt was dropped by Sarbella.” He was taking the 
door key from his pocket and was starting to leave 
the room. 

“Certainly,” answered Wiggly, moving to follow. 
“I came out from the office in a taxi, and it’s waiting 



THE FOUR CLEWS 


177 


downstairs. I shall come back immediately after I 

have-” His voice trailed off, as he squinted at 

the floor, where the chaise longue with its tragic 
burden cast a shadow over the rug. Swiftly he bent 
forward and picked up something. 

Doctor Bushnell stared; it was nothing more 
startling than a hairpin, and he was rather im¬ 
patient that the newspaper man should subject it 
to such an apparently interesting scrutiny. 

“As I said,” murmured Wiggly, “artificial light 
is tricky. Either one of us should have noticed this 
before.” 

“It’s nothing but a common, ordinary hairpin,” 
grunted the physician; “there’s nothing in that— 
probably fell out of her hair.” 

Price’s forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and 
his ears were wiggling again. 

It dropped from some one’s hair,” he muttered. 
“Her hair? I wonder if it did?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Doctor Bushnell. 

“Look at it!” the other commanded tersely. “What 
color is that hairpin?” 

“Black, of course,” the doctor said impatiently. 

“Exactly—^black! The dead woman’s hair is 
blond. Step over to her dressing table, and perhaps 
you’ll be puzzled, too. See, she uses bronze hair¬ 
pins, doctor. Any woman with hair the color of 
hers, would. A black hairpin! I wonder if this is 
a clew, a real clew?” 

“Rot!” retorted the physician. “Any one might 
have dropped it; the maid- 

“Where is the maid?” 

“Bates said that she went to Yonkers.” 

“And has the maid black hair?” 




178 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Doctor Bushnell considered for a moment, trying 
to remember. “Dark hair,” he nodded; “perhaps not 
black. I couldn’t say as to the identical shade.” 

“The other Mrs. Gilmore?” 

“Quite gray.” 

“And the other—^what is her name?” 

The doctor frowned indignantly. “Such a sus¬ 
picion is too ridiculous, too absurd!” he protested. 
Yet with a vaguely uneasy feeling he remembered 
Joan Sheridan’s strange behavior, her anguished pro¬ 
test of Victor Sarbella’s innocence—and Joan’s hair 
was black, jet black! 


CHAPTER XVII 


KIRKLAN PROTESTS 

H int of the physician’s disturbed thoughts must 
have shown in his face, for Wiggly Price gave 
him a keen, curious look, which seemed to increase 
the former’s discomfiture; he dallied nervously with 
the fraternal charm attached to his watch chain. 

“What color did you say, doctor?” pressed the 
newspaper man. 

“It’s ridiculous, absurd!” Bushnell repeated ex¬ 
plosively. “What if Joan’s hair is dark? Confound 
it, you make me downright angry, casting an in¬ 
sinuation like that, just because of an inconsequen¬ 
tial thing like a hairpin.” 

Wiggly gave a faint smile which was grim rather 
than humorous. 

“I haven’t insinuated anything, doctor; just asked 
a question, that’s all. Oh, I admit there’s nothing 
conclusive about a hairpin, and yet—^well, there 
was the Hitchcock case that I mentioned, solved 
by a black mourning pin.” 

“For murder there’s got to be a motive,” argued 
Doctor Bushnell; “no one besides Sarhella had a 
motive. I don’t care what you find. I’d never be¬ 
lieve that any one except Sarhella- 

The door was flruig open with a startling violence, 
and Kirklan Gilmore lunged into the room, hair dis¬ 
heveled, eyes wide and staring. 

“What—what does this mean?” he cried hoarsely. 
“Bates tells me that the constable has arrested Sar- 



180 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

bella. Is that true? Come, answer me, what does 
it mean?” 

Under his breath the doctor cursed the butler for 
adding this to the man’s nervous strain. 

‘i thought I gave you a sleeping tablet, Kirklan. 
Bates should not have excited you by-” 

“Certainly he should have,” Gilmore broke in. 
“I’ve a right to know what’s going on in my own 
house. Bates was perfectly right; but what does it 
mean? Bates says that Sarbella was taken away 
—handcuffed. It’s true, isn’t it?” 

Doctor Bushnell nodded. “Yes, Kirklan, it’s true; 
Sarbella is being—ah—detained, pending—well, at 
least pending further investigation of your wife’s 
murder. Certain things developed which made it 
advisable and necessary.” 

“Great Lord!” whispered Gilmore, his shaking 
fingers raking back a tangled shock of hair that 
fell across his forehead. “You mean—you mean 
that Sarbella has been arrested for—for that?” His 
other hand went out, pointing to the couch. 

“Try and calm yourself, Kirklan,” soothed the 
physician. “I hadn’t intended that you should laiow 
this until you had pulled yourself together some¬ 
what. I knew that it would be a tremendous shock 
for you to know that your friend, a guest in your 
home-” 

“Why,” broke in the novelist, “was Sarbella ar¬ 
rested?” 

Doctor Bushnell hesitated over the answer, and 
Wiggly Price drew back to one side, making himself 
as inconspicuous as possible. 

“I demand to know,” insisted Gilmore, and the 
doctor saw that there could be no further evasion. 



KIRKLAN PROTESTS 


181 


“As I told you downstairs, Kirklan,” said Bush- 
nell, “we have established beyond all question that 
it was murder. Since she was killed, some one 
had to kill her.” 

“But why Sarbella?” the author pressed impa¬ 
tiently. 

“Obviously,” went on the doctor, “an effort has 
been made to make it appear suicide, but the effort 
failed; such efforts usually do. It’s hard to destroy 
evidence, next to the impossible. There were but 
five persons in the house; you and Bates down¬ 
stairs, your stepmother, Joan and Sarbella upstairs. 
Taking the list into consideration it was only nat¬ 
ural that suspicion should turn to Sarbella. And 
then- 

“But that’s not proof, doctor—^that’s only sus¬ 
picion,” broke in Gilmore. “If you had no evi¬ 
dence, I don’t see how you dared-” 

“We had a little more than that,” said Doctor 
Bushnell with obvious reluctance, realizing that cir¬ 
cumstances had made it unavoidable that Kirklan 
should know the terrible truth about Helen’s past 
life. “You see, Kirklan, we discovered that Sarbella 
had a motive.” 

“A motive?” Gilmore muttered dully. “What do 
you mean by that? What reason could he have 
had? Out with it! Why do you torture me with 
this suspense?” 

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward and put a hand 
on the other’s shoulder. 

“Heaven knows that I wish I could spare you 
this, Kirklan, but it’s bound to come out at the 
trial and in the newspapers. You were not aware, 
I suppose, that there was a previous relationship 




182 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


between-” He had phrased it clumsily and Gil¬ 

more started back with a shudder, a look of 
anguished horror on his face. 

“You mean that Sarbella and my wife were- 

He lied to me—^he lied to me—^gave me his word 
of honor that he had never seen her before. I 
knew there was something wrong; I saw her face 
when she met him; I knew- 

“No you misunderstand me, Kirklan. There was 
nothing like that. Perhaps you did not know that 
Sarbella had a brother, a younger brother named 
Andrea, who-” 

“Who shot himself,” finished Gilmore. “Yes, Fd 
heard of it; that happened before I knew Victor. 
But what has that got to do with this?” 

“Young Sarbella shot himself because of a 
woman,” went bn Doctor Bushnell. “Because a 
woman, a very beautiful woman whom he loved 
madly, had misled him about herself. She lied to 
him, tricked him, and then—the woman’s husband 
came to him and told him the truth.” 

Kirklan Gilmore stared dully; he seemed not to 
grasp the inference of it all. The room was tensely 
quiet. 

“I—I don’t understand,” he muttered thickly, 
“what that has to do with Sarbella and my wife.” 

“Andrea Sarbella,” the doctor went on gently, 
“was the idol of his mother and his brother. Shock 
of the tragedy cost the mother’s life, and Victor, it 
seems, took an oath that he would avenge himself 
on the woman responsible for his double bereave¬ 
ment.” 

The dawning light of comprehension showed in 
Gilmore’s horror-stricken eyes; a cry arose in his 



KIRKLAN PROTESTS 183 

throat, as he staggered back into a chair and buried 
his head within his hands. 

“You mean,” he choked, “that the woman was— 
was—^my wife!” 

“Yes, Kirklan, your wife was that woman. Now 
you can understand why Sarbella has been placed 
under arrest.” 

Again the room was silent, silent except for the 
choking sob which came from the man huddled 
low in the chair. After a moment he staggered 
to his feet and flung his arms wildly. 

“It’s a lie!” he shouted. “It’s a lie! I don’t 
believe it; I’ll never believe it. Why, if what you 
say is true, she-” 

“Calm yourself, Kirklan. Sarbella has admitted 
what I have told you. We might have never known 
the truth except that this young man recognized 
her and put us on the right track.” 

Gilmore, for the first time, seemed aware of 
Wiggly Price’s presence. 

“Who are you?” he demanded hoa^^sely. “What 
do you mean by coming here with these lies—about 
my wife? Answer me—^who are you?” 

“My name is Price, and I am a newspaper man.” 

Gilmore wheeled accusingly upon the doctor. 
“Who let him in?” he shouted. “Didn’t I tell 
you- 

“Easy, Kirklan, easy now. I can’t answer as to 
how Price got into the house, but I’ll say it’s a lucky 
thing for us that he did. Except for him we might 
still be beating our heads against a stone wall. 
When you’ve calmed down you’ll thank him instead 
of berating him. It may be that he is the agent 
who will bring your wife’s murderer to justice. No 



184 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


matter what the woman did, a murder has been 
done; Sarbella had no right to take vengeance into 
his own hands.” 

The novelist dropped limply back into the chair, 
his muscles twitching, as he stared at the sheet- 
covered body. 

“Sarbella?” he muttered thickly. “What—^what 
does Sarbella say?” 

“Naturally he denies it,” answered the doctor. 
“We hope to find proof. We must find proof; I 
doubt if he could be convicted on the purely cir- 
sumstantial evidence that we have so far. Unless 
we can establish his ownership of the automatic 
pistol, we will have to find something else. If he 
thought the gun could be traced he surely would 
not have left it behind.” 

Gilmore lifted his head slowly. 

“Then there is no proof—only—only suspicion?” 
He paused for a moment and then added: “I can’t 
believe it! I can’t believe that Sarbella killed her. 
And she—she was—that kind of a woman!” 

Doctor Bushnell touched his shoulder. “Try not 
to grieve, Kirklan,” he urged quietly. “You were 
in love with the woman you thought her to be, 
and she did not exist. She wasn’t worth a good 
man’s grief. We do not even know—in fact, I 
doubt—if her marriage was legal.” 

“I can’t believe that Sarbella did it,” repeated Gil¬ 
more dully. “She—she must have killed herself 
to escape the truth.” 

“Did you happen to notice the brand of cigarettes 
that Sarbella smokes?” asked Wiggly Price. 

Gilmore’s resentment against the newspaper man 
seemed to have vanished; he displayed no curiosity 


KIRKLAN PROTESTS 185 

over this apparently idle question, only shook his 
head absently, like a man in a daze. 

“And your wife,” pressed Wiggly, “I don’t sup¬ 
pose that she used a cigarette now and then?” 

Again Gilmore shook his head, almost stupidly 
and without verbal response, his hands dangling 
inertly across the arms of the chair. 

“Sarbella didn’t do it,” he muttered again, as if 
talking to himself; “she did it to escape the truth. 
Nothing will ever convince me—nothing!” 

Aroimd the edges of the drawn curtain was creep¬ 
ing the light of a graying dawn. Price moved to¬ 
ward the door. 

“I’m going down to the village,” he said in an 
imdertone to the doctor; “I’ll come back when I’ve 
talked with Sarbella about his brand of cigarettes. 
Remember my hunch and the black hairpin.” 

With that he hurried down the stairs and to the 
still waiting taxicab, with its driver napping behind 
the wheel. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 

' I ^HE Ardmore jail was located in the basement 
* of Borough Hall, and, since it was but a place 
of temporary detention until prisoners could be re¬ 
moved to the county seat, it consisted of a single 
cell, a narrow steel cage tucked away in one corner 
adjoining the furnace room. It was here that Vic¬ 
tor Sarbella, who had ceased his protests and had 
lapsed into a stony silence, that took no cognizance 
of Constable Griggs’ persistent and exasperating 
questioning, had been lodged. 

Wiggly Price found Borough Hall locked, and the 
place was in darkness. Griggs had decided to let 
the prisoner “cool his heels” for a while, and he 
had gone home to freshen himself with a nap before 
continuing the cross-examination. The village was 
still soundly asleep, and Wiggly, thinking that the 
constable must return shortly, made himself as com¬ 
fortable as possible in the cab. 

Time dragged past, and the reporter considered 
the Greenacres tragedy and its various angles. A 
great little rider of hunches was Wiggly, and, in the 
face of the obvious, he was riding the hunch that 
Sarbella hadn’t shot Helen Gilmore. And the black 
hairpin, small a thing as it was, occupied a con¬ 
spicuous corner of his thoughts. The broken vase 
he thought of only casually. The half-burned 
cigarette butt he admitted might have some im¬ 
portance, but he much doubted that it had belonged 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 187 

to Sarbella. As he had told Doctor Bushnell, he 
couldn’t conceive a murderer, smoking a cigarette, 
would walk in on his victim. It just wasn’t rea¬ 
sonable. 

The east was bright with the dawn of a brilliant 
day; the sun mounted higher, and still Ham Griggs 
had not returned. Wiggly glanced at his watch 
with a growl of impatience; he knew that it wouldn’t 
be long until other news hounds would be keen on 
the scent of the big story. 

“Confound that fellow!” he muttered. “Where’s 
he gone to? More than likely he considers the case 
solved and has gone home to tell his folks what a 
great detective he is!” 

From far up the deserted street just one sound 
broke the stillness, a particularly cheerful, but tune¬ 
less, whistle which, as it came nearer, brought into 
view an elephantine youth who approached with a 
flat-footed shuffle, his shoes flapping noisily, as if 
they might be trying to mark time to their owner’s 
musical efforts. The village fat boy, drawing closer, 
left off whistling and turned to song, singing in a 
shrill treble, “Yes, we have no bananas. We have 
no bananas to-day.” 

Wiggily stepped from the cab to intercept him, 
and for no reason at all, unless it were taken for 
granted that it was outward evidence of an other¬ 
wise unexpressed mirth, Wiggly’s ears twitched. 

“Say, son,” Wiggly said briskly, “do you know 
where Constable Griggs lives?” 

For the moment Master Frederick Throgmorton, 
as the local juvenile heavyweight was named, was 
totally bereft of speech, completely hypnotized by 
the amazing gymnastics of Jimmy Price’s ears. 


188 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Huh?” he finally gulped. “Whatcha—^whatcha 
say?” 

“I said: Do you know where Constable Griggs 
lives?” 

“Sure—sure thing,” gasped Fatty Frederick. 
“Right—right down this street—third block, second 
house from the corner. Say, mister, tell a feller 
somethin’—how did you learn to do it?” 

Wiggly flushed, as he always did when reminded 
of his refractory appendages, and he dived swiftly 
back into the cab, as he gave the chauffeur further 
directions. The taxi shot forward with a jerk. 
Less than a minute later they had negotiated the 
three blocks, and the New York newspaper man was 
on the sidewalk and at the picket gate of the 
Griggs cottage. 

Etta, the constable’s daughter, was ambitious, but 
her ambition was centered upon becoming a play¬ 
wright and did not as a rule, extend to early rising. 
Rut this morning she was up, fully dressed, and, at 
the moment of Wiggly Price’s ring, pressing her 
father for further details of the Greenacres murder. 
For once in her life she was actually taking some 
pride in the fact that her parent was a constable. 
And Ham Griggs willingly sacrificed his intended 
“forty winks” that he might elaborate, none too 
modestly, on the part he had played; after all, it 
was something to be a hero to the critical and ex¬ 
acting Etta. 

“I wouldn’t be a lot surprised,” he was saying, 
“that the reporter feller will be wantin’ my pitcher 
to put in the paper. There ain’t no use for me to 
deny, Etty, that I done a purty slick piece of work. 
I knowed the minute I clapped eyes on the Eyetalian 


189 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 

that he was the one that done it. Wouldn’t be 
surprised but what I’d better scoot down to Jess 
Burnside’s pitcher gallery an’ have some new 

pitchers struck; I ain’t set for a pitcher since-” 

He was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. 
Father and daughter had been so absorbed that they 
had not heard the arrival of the taxi. 

“I’ll answer it, fawther,” said Etta, and for once 
Ham Griggs did not correct the affectation which or¬ 
dinarily so annoyed him. They had been sitting in 
the kitchen, and Etta had put on a pot of coffee 
which, entirely unnoticed, had boiled over. Ham 
tilted back in a chair, uniform coat thrown open, 
snapping his suspenders smartly against his chest. 

Etta frisked through the brief hallway to the 
front of the cottage. As she opened the door, the 
upper portion of which was glass, with a frosted 
design alleged to be artistic, she faced Wiggly 
Price, who neglected the polite formality of removing 
his hat. 

“Constable Griggs live here?” 

“He does,” admitted Etta, one hand resting upon 
her practically hipless waist, chin slightly tilted. 
“Who shall I tell fawther is calling, please?” 

“Price, of The New York Starr 

“0-oh,” gasped Etta, flustered. “Come—come 

right in; I’ll tell him.” 

But there was no need to tell him. Ham Griggs, 
the intervening doors being open, had heard him and 
came striding out from the kitchen, morally certain 
that his prediction was well founded, and that the 
reporter had come for a photograph. 

“Come right on in, son,” he boomed hospitably. 
“Etty’s just fixin’ me up a cup of Java, an’ I guess 


190 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


she can scare up a flock of eggs. Guess you ain’t 
had no breakfast, huh? Come right on into the 
kitchen an’ make yourself to home.” 

“Fawther!” cried Etta in embarrassed indignation. 
“Ain’t you—^haven’t you forgotten your manners? In 
the kitchen? Why the very idea! I’ll set the table 
in the dining room, and-” 

“The kitchen for mine 1 Don’t bother. Miss Griggs. 
I’m in pretty much of a hurry, but I can’t turn down 
a cup of coffee after being up all night.” 

“Sure,” the constable nodded complacently and 
then added: “Guess nothin’ new turned up out at 
Greenacres, huh? I nailed the right man, all right; 
not a bad piece of work for a hick constable, if I 
do say so myself.” With a laugh he led the way 
into the kitchen, while the mortified Etta bit her 
lip in chagrin; but there was no choice in accepting 
the situation. She recalled a line from her “Social 
Etiquette” which told her, “When embarrassed by 
an unexpected caller, the hostess should at once 
accept the situation in good grace and make her 
guest feel welcome.” But a guest in the kitchen! 
Her little reference book was mute as to that. 

“I want to see Sarbella just as quickly as I can,” 
said Wiggly, sitting down and hitching his chair 
close to the table. He sniffed avidly. “Ah, that 
coffee does smell good!” 

“Sure,” agreed Ham Griggs. “But whatcha want 
to see him about? What’s happened?” 

“Nothing’s happened—exactly,” Wiggly answered 
cautiously, knowing that the constable would in all 
probability resent any intimation of Sarbella’s pos¬ 
sible innocence. Even a seasoned detective, once 
he has made up his mind, does not relish the idea 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 


191 


of being shown that he had been wrong. In Griggs’ 
case, it would be a hard blow to his exuberant 
vanity. “But, as you may realize, our evidence 
against the man is so far purely circumstantial.” 

“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” the constable 
said complacently; “he’ll come through with a con¬ 
fession, after he’s had a good taste of jail. Stub¬ 
born as a mule he is so far, but he’ll break down; 
they all do.” 

“Isn’t it thrilling!” broke in Etta, pouring coffee. 
“It’s what you call a big story, isn’t it?” 

Wiggly gave a smiling nod. “It’s about the best 
murder story I’ve ever worked on.” 

Etta beamed. “It was I who called up your 
editor and told him about it,” she announced. 

“The thunder you did I” grunted Ham Griggs. 

“If it’s a scoop,” promised Wiggly; “I’ll tell the 
city editor to have the business office mail you a 
fat little check for the tip.” 

“Oh, no! I didn’t do it for any mercenary rea¬ 
sons. But, if the editor wants to say something 
nice about my play-” 

“Eh—^your play?” 

“I expect it to be produced this fall. It’s nearly 
finished; I have promised to let a New York pro¬ 
ducer stage it.” 

“Yes, I see,” murmured Wiggly gravely. He had 
the good sense not to indulge in a smile, but his 
ears moved faintly. “And I’ll certainly speak to 
the dramatic critic about it—I certainly will.” Un¬ 
der his breath he added: “Lord, what the play 
bug does to people!” 

Etta was so excited by what she considered the 
total success of her plan to establish a cordial per- 



192 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


sonal relationship with the press that she tipped a 
cup, spilling hot coffee over the back of her father’s 
hand. 

“The murder of Greenacres has given me the in¬ 
spiration for another play,” she said. “It shall be a 
mystery play; they’re so popular in New York.” 

“A good mystery is about the most interesting 
thing in the world,” declared Wiggly, dropping a 
spoonful of sugar and stirring vigorously. 

“And the Gilmore tragedy—fawther has just fin¬ 
ished telling me all about it—isn’t it dramatic?” 

“It certainly is. Miss Griggs,” agreed the re¬ 
porter, wishing the girl were in Halifax. 

“And to think,” she rushed on, “that Kirklan Gil¬ 
more’s new wife was such an awful woman. So 
pretty, too; I saw her only the other day. You 
know it was such a surprise when he married her. 
Mrs. Huggins—she’s a seamstress and used to sew 
for the Gilmore’s—thought it was certain that he 
would marry Joan; such a sweet girl, Joan.” 

Wiggly’s wandering thoughts suddenly became 
centered upon what the gushing Etta was saying. 

“Joan?” he murmured. 

“Young Mr. Gilmore’s stepsister, you know. Didn’t 
you see her? Such a sweet girl! Oh, I suppose 
some people would consider it unusual for a man to 
marry his stepsister, but Mrs. Huggins thought it 
would turn out that way. She’s got sharp eyes, 
Mrs. Huggins has, and she said that Joan was 
simply in love with Mr. Gilmore; she used to help 
him so much with his work, I understand. And 
then, while she was away in Europe, he married the 
other one. It was such a terrible surprise to every¬ 
body. And Mrs. Huggins said-Her gossip 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 193 

broke off into a gasp, as she stared at the reporter’s 
ears which were now wiggling almost violently. 

So Joan was in love with her stepbrother; she 
had dark hair; and he had found a black hairpin 
on the floor beside the slain woman’s body! This 
certainly was food for thought—^not only food, but 
a feast! The Greenacres story gave promise of 
being a live mystery. 

And there was the cigarette butt; the husband did 
not smoke cigarettes; therefore it could not be 
explained by this dropping it there, and, if it 
wasn’t Sarbella’s- There was another angle. 

During Etta’s moment of speechlessness, Wiggly 
debated these matters swiftly, as he gulped down 
his coffee, and Constable Griggs embraced the op¬ 
portunity to get back into the conversation. 

“Whatcha say you wanted to see Sarbella about?” 
be demanded. 

“As I said,” answered Wiggly; “there’s no proof 
against him except that he might be considered to 
have a motive, and that he also had an opportunity 
to commit the crime. Juries don’t send men to the 
death chair on that sort of evidence. Of course, 
if he makes a confession or we can trace the murder 
gun to him, that automatically solves our difficulty; 
but Sarbella is probably shrewd enough to realize 
what a weak case you’ve got against him; if he 
does realize that, and if he is guilty, he’ll have 
sense enough to keep his mouth shut.” 

“Whatcha hittin’ at?” growled Ham Griggs. 

“After you left Greenacres, Doctor Bushnell and 
I looked around a little, and we found a half-burned 
cigarette mashed down into the rug of the room 



194 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

where the woman was killed. Since Gilmore doesn’t 
smoke-” 

“Sarbella smokes ’em,” broke in the constable. 
“Sure he does; purty near one right after the 
other. Regular cigarette fiend, the feller is. That 
clinches the case on him, huh? Is that what you’re 
drivin’ at?” 

“If he smokes the same sort of cigarette as the 
one Doctor Bushnell found on the rug. I’d say it 
was pretty much a clincher. It would be evidence 
that he had been in the room.” 

“Of course it’s his cigarette!” exclaimed Ham 
Griggs, Imnbering swiftly to his feet. “I’d bet a 
hundred dollars on it. Come on, son, we’ll get right 
down to the jail and prove it.” 

“Why, fawther!” came Etta’s protest. “Won’t 
you let Mr. Price wait until I have cooked the eggs? 
I was going to put them on the fire this minute.” 

“Speaking for Mr. Price,” said Wiggly, “the coffee 
is sufficient. Thanks just the same.” He pushed 
back his chair and moved to follow the constable. 

“Like as not when we face ’im with this,” sug¬ 
gested Griggs, “he’ll break down an’ make a clean 
breast of it.” 

“Oh, Mr. Price,” called Etta, “you won’t forget to 
—to speak to the dramatic critic about my play?” 

Wiggly promised, without committing himself as 
to just how he would speak of it; there are some 
things, from a diplomatic standpoint, best left un¬ 
said. 

The constable clumped briskly out of the house 
with the reporter following. As they got into the 
taxi. Ham Griggs wondered if he were not to be 
asked for a photograph‘with which to adorn the first 



TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 


195 


page of The Star; already he had visualized the 
caption: “Figures in Gilmore Murder Case—Local 
Officer Who Solved Baffling Mystery.” 

“If you want my pitcher for the paper,” he sug¬ 
gested, “Fd better see about havin’ one struck. 
Of course I ain’t lookin’ for no puff, hut-” 

“No use going to that expense,” Wiggly broke in; 
“we’ll probably have a staff photographer down 
during the day, and he can snap you on the scene— 
examining the murder gun, you know, or something 
like that. Action pictures always more interesting, 
Mr. Constable,” he ended emphatically. 

The brief trip was completed, and, as the machine 
again drew to a halt in front of Borough Hall, the 
chauffeur entered a protest. 

“Say, boss,” he exclaimed, “you don’t expect a 
guy to sit at the wheel forever, do you? A man’s 
gotta sleep some time. Guess you’d better pay what 
the meter reads an* let me skim back to the big 
town.” 

Wiggly paid the charge, which was twenty-seven 
dollars, gave a three-dollar tip, and let him go. 
Griggs entered the village’s public building and led 
the way down into the basement, where Sarbella 
was lodged. At the sound of their footsteps, ring¬ 
ing on the concrete floor, the prisoner left off his 
nervous pacing of the cell’s narrow confines and 
came to the steel door of the cage. His attitude 
was weary, dejected. 

“Mebbe you’re ready to speak up, huh?” grunted 
Ham Griggs, facing him from the other side of 
the bars. 

“I have nothing to add,” Victor Sarbella an¬ 
swered; “you already have .the only statement I care 


196 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

to make,” he paused briefly and then added, “for 
the present.” 

“Silence ain’t goin’ to do you no good, for I aim 
to keep you right where you are until you get 
ready to start talkin’,” blustered the constable. “We 
know you killed her; we’ve dug up some more evi¬ 
dence on you—little matter of a cigarette that you 
dropped on the floor of that room out to Green¬ 
acres.” 

“Cigarette?” muttered Sarbella. 

“May I have your cigarette case for a moment, 
Mr. Sarbella?” requested Wiggly. 

The prisoner hesitated, gave the newspaper man 
a wary glance, and, evidently realizing that they 
would take it away from him by force, if he re¬ 
fused, slid his hand into his pocket, producing a 
silver case inlaid with gold stripes. He shrugged 
his shoulders. 

“I don’t know what it’s all about, but you’re 
welcome; please do not destroy the smokes. I’ve 
only two left.” 

Wiggly Price took the elaborate case, whicjj Sar¬ 
bella passed through the bars, and snapped it open. 
One glance was sufficient to verify his logical doubts 
that the butt of the cheap cigarette which Doctor 
Bushnell had discovered on the floor of the tragedy 
chamber had not been the artist’s. The two ciga¬ 
rettes before him were of an expensive imported 
brand, straw-tipped and monogrammed with the 
man’s initials. 

The constable was looking over his shoulder, as 
Wiggly extracted from his vest pocket the flattened 
bit of evidence upon which both Doctor Bushnell 


TWO BRANDS OF CIGARETTES 197 

and Ham Griggs had expressed so much faith. He 
unfolded the strip of paper that enwrapped it. 

“They are not the same,” he announced. “I didn’t 
expect them to he. The question now is—^to whom 
did this belong? It looks very much like another 
man—a man with cheap tastes in tobacco—^was in 
that room last night!” 

Victor Sarbella pressed his body tensely against 
the bars, but not so much as a syllable passed his 
lips. Perhaps there was a look of relief in his face. 


CHAPTER XIX 


ENTER SERGEANT TISH 

T he constable and Wiggly had left the basement, 
and Griggs was almost apoplectic with anger. 
He glared at the reporter with indignant disgust and, 
as they entered the room used for the sessions of 
the borough council, flopped down in a chair. 

“Now if you ain’t made a fine mess of things! 
An’ I give you credit for havin’ some sensei I 
might have got a confession outta him except for 
your meddlin’. Dog-gone you, anyhow! He’ll think 
now that he’s got a chance to get out of it after 
you tollin’ him that there must have been another 
man in the room where the woman was killed.” 

“You’ve got to admit that it isn’t Sarbella’s ciga¬ 
rette butt,” defended Wiggly. 

“If I’d have known you was goin’ to pull a 
stunt like that, I’d never have let you in to see 
him,” raged Ham Griggs. “Next time I’ll have 
better gumption than to let some fool reporter gum 
the cards for me—you just bet I will.” 

“Let’s talk it over,” Wiggly urged placatingly. 
“Let’s use a little simple logic. You admit, don’t 
you, that this isn’t Sarbella’s brand?” 

“I don’t admit nothin’ of the sort,” raged the con¬ 
stable. “Chances are that he dropped that cheap 
cigarette on the floor as a blind, tryin’ to leave a 
false scent to fool us.” 

Wiggly shook his head. “That won’t hold water, 
constable; you forget that the murderer tried to 


ENTER SERGEANT TISH 


199 


make it appear suicide. And, as I tried to impress 
on Doctor Bushnell, can you imagine a man set on 
murder slipping in on his victim—smoking a ciga¬ 
rette?” 

But Ham Griggs was in no mood for logic; he 
considered that he had solved the case in arresting 
Sarhella, and he wanted it to stay solved. A re¬ 
opening of the facts led him into water over his 
head, and he foresaw himself floundering helplessly 
beyond his depth. 

“Sarhella done it!” he shouted. “He killed the 
Gilmore woman; he shot her to get even. He shot 
her—with this gun.” Dramatically he dragged forth 
the automatic pistol and waved it almost wildlJ^ 
“And you’ve gone and messed things up by lettin’ 
him think he had a chance to get off—dam your 
hide!” 

The outburst was checked by the opening of the 
door which led into the council room from the out¬ 
side entrance, and there entered a short, rotund man 
who wore his hat perched upon a bandaged head. 

“Where’s the chief of police?” was the stranger’s 
greeting. 

“I’m the constable; it amounts to the same thing 
in Ardmore,” Griggs answered shortly, “but I ain’t 
got no time to he bothered.” 

The corpulent little visitor moved hack the edge 
of his coat, revealing a badge of the New York 
police department. 

“I’m Detective Sergeant Tish—^New York head¬ 
quarters,” he announced. “Your name Griggs? You 
telephoned last night to the Consolidated Taxicab 
Company that you’d picked up an abandoned taxi 
on one of the roads near Ardmore?” 


200 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Yes, I did,” grunted Constable Griggs, “but I 
ain’t got no time to bother about taxicabs now. Fve 
got a murder on my hands.” 

“And I want to get my hands on a murderer,” 
shot back Sergeant John Henry Tish. “That taxicab 
was stolen by-” 

“Don’t give a hoot if it was!” shouted the con¬ 
stable. “The taxi’s at Presley’s garage. Go get it, 
if you want it.” He even forgot that he had ex¬ 
pected to receive a ten-dollar gift from the taxicab 
company. 

Sergeant Tish, however, was not to be put off 
so easily. He projected his short, portly form closer 
and occupied a chair beside the council table, with 
the air of having something to say and being de¬ 
termined to say it. He wasted no time. 

“Listen!” he commanded, wagging a pudgy fore¬ 
finger with a forceful gesture. “This is just as 
important to me as your case is to you. See this?” 
He tapped his bandaged head. “The man I’m after 
did this to me, and I’m going to get him. He 
knocked me cold—after I had the nippers on him, 
see? I’ve got to get him. 

“There may be some time when you’ll want a 
favor from the New York department. I want a 
little information—and a little courtesy. I’m no 
windbag, and I won’t keep you long.” 

“All right,” grunted Constable Griggs. “What is 
it you want?” 

“Thanks,” said Sergeant Tish. “First, where was 
it that you picked up the machine?” 

“Out on the Hudson Road, ’bout half a mile 
from the village proper. I called Presley’s garage 
an’ had ’em drive the bus into their shop—and that’s 


ENTER SERGEANT TISH 201 

all I can tell you about it, every blessed thing. I 
notified the taxicab company.” 

“Sure, I know that, and they flashed it right to 
headquarters. There was a general alarm out for 
that taxi. So it was run into the garage—under 
its own power, huh? That means Haskins didn’t 
ditch the car because something went wrong with 
the engine. That may help some. Pretty swell folks 
live out on the Hudson Road, eh?” 

Griggs nodded. “Most of ’em is rich,” he agreed; 
“either rich or pretty well fixed.” 

“Sounds like it might be a warm trail,” said 
Sergeant Tish, puffing out his plump cheeks. “Y’see 
—well. I’ll have to give you the inside for you to 
understand just what the situation is.” 

Despite his first impatience. Constable Griggs be¬ 
came interested and offered no protest. 

“This bird I’m after,” pursued Tish, “is named 
Don Haskins. He’s got a record as long as an 
income-tax report. Done a couple of short stretches 
at Sing Sing, one out West—Illinois—and has been 
in the line-up down at headquarters and in the 
Tombs. It would take an expert accountant to 
keep the count. He used to be a slick crook, nifty 
dresser and free spender, but he’d started slippin’. 
They all do. Clever—and hard-boiled.” 

Here Tish told the constable of his encounter 
with Haskins. 

“Humph!” grunted Constable Griggs. “I see. 
And you’re looking for your man in these parts. 
Sorry I ain’t got the time to help, but-” 

“Just a minute,” broke in Sergeant Tish. “I ain’t 
quite through yet. I’m right at the nub of it. 
Eighth Avenue Annie, I guess, wanted to cover up; 



202 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


anyhow, she runs out on the street yellin’ bloody 
murder, and a couple of uniform men rushes in 
to find me laid out, dead to the world. But they 
brings me around, and then—oh, the grillin’ we 
did give old Annie! We still got her locked up on 
a technical charge. 

“Before we got through with her, she comes 
through with a lot of dope she didn’t want to cough 
up. She hadda admit that Haskins had paid her 
big for his hide-out, and that he was gettin’ ready 
to make the big jump out of town; that he had 
a rich sister, a real swell, who made him a visit 
and give him some dough. She was goin’ to come 
back with more. 

“Now, that’s the funny part of it; one of the 
boys down at headquarters knows Don Haskins 
from the first time he went to Elmira Reformatory, 
and he says that Haskins did have a sister, but that 
she died eight or nine years ago, and that she 
didn’t fit the description which Annie give us. No 
matter about that, it’s a cinch that some swell jane 
did bring him the money. Annie says she was the 
class. 

“Now, I was just wondering, gents—Haskins 
leaves the swiped taxi out on Hudson Road. The 
engine was 0. K. That’s proof that he left it there 
because he wanted to, and not because the car 
stopped on him. Where was he headin’ for? Mebbe 
this swell who calls herself his sister lives around 
here. Now, you’ve got the whole works. I want 
somebody to help me check up. See?” 

Ham Griggs’ cap was on the desk which belonged 
officially to the borough council’s president, his 
honor. Mayor Ripley. The cap accidentally—not 


ENTER SERGEANT TISH 203 

from any design—covered the automatic pistol which 
had killed Helen Gilmore. 

“As I told you,” reiterated the constable, “Fm 
too busy this mornin’ to do anything for you. 
Mebbe this afternoon, when Fve got a confession 
outta the prisoner I got downstairs, Fll have more 
time.” He reached for his uniform cap with a 
gesture of unshakable finality. 

Sergeant Tish suddenly strained forward, his eyes 
bulging from out of his plump round face, staring 
in open-mouthed and bewildered amazement at the 
.44 on the desk. 

“Where did you get that gun?” he gasped, lung¬ 
ing out of the chair and making a dive for it, get¬ 
ting his hands on it before Griggs could stop him. 
“Where did you get my gun?” 

Ham Griggs snorted derisively. “Your gun? This 
here ain’t your gun. It belongs to that prisoner 
I got downstairs, and he shot a woman with it 
last night. That’s the murder case I’m workin’ on.” 

Tish’s face was a strange study of emotion. “It’s 
my gim!” he shouted. “Here’s a little place chipped 
off one of the butt plates. Sure it’s my gun. 
Police department issue—^you can tell that by the 
serial number. Sure, it’s my gun—^the one Don 
Haskins took off of me yesterday when he knocked 
me out. And you say that a woman was shot with 
it—^murdered? You say that you took it off a 
prisoner, and that you’ve got him here? You mean 
that you’ve got Haskins locked up?” 

The questions all jerked out with no pause, leav¬ 
ing him breathless, his fat cheeks quivering. Con¬ 
stable Griggs was speechless, and Wiggly Price’s 


204 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


ears seemed determined to work themselves loose 
from his head. 

“You’re dead sure, sergeant, that it is your gun?” 
Wiggly demanded tensely. “It—it’s very important 
that there should be no mistake about this?” 

“Don’t you suppose I know my own gun?” 
snapped Sergeant Tish. “That’s a funny question, 
askin’ a cop if he knows his own gun. I want 
Haskins, and I want him now.” 

Constable Griggs found things happening just 
a little too fast for his slow wits. “I think you 
must he plumb crazy,” he sputtered. “The prisoner 
we got is named Sarbella, an Eyetalian feller; he’s 
the one that shot the woman with the gun. Gimme 
it hack.” 

“Like thunder I’ll give it back!” retorted Sergeant 
Tish. 

“Wait!” said Wiggly. “I—I think I’m beginning 
to see some daylight. Haskins was a crook; some 
good-looking, swell-dressed woman brought him 
money—posed as his rich sister. And the minute 
Haskins got nabbed he made tracks for Ardmore. 
The cheap, ten-cents-a-pack cigarettes! Just the 
kind that Haskins might be expected to smoke. 
Haskins had Sergeant Tish’s gun—and that’s the 
gun that killed her. Don’t you understand, con¬ 
stable? We’ve made a bad mistake because we 
didn’t know anything about Haskins. The mur¬ 
derer was Haskins—^the crook!” 

And for the moment Wiggly forgot all about 
the black hairpin. 


CHAPTER XX 

A QUEER JUMBLE 

TJASKINS killed her!” Wiggly Price repeated 
^ * excitedly. “We’re on the right trail; there 
doesn t seem to he any other explanation now. 
Haskins, the crook, shot her—with that gun,” 

While Sergeant Tish’s identification of the murder 
gun, as the same automatic pistol that Don Haskins 
had taken from his unconscious person the previous 
afternoon, plus the certainty that Haskins had 
deserted the stolen taxicab at no great distance 
from Greenacres, made it an obvious theory that 
it might have been the crook who had murdered 
Helen Gilmore, Constable Griggs sputtered pro- 
testingly. No man likes to admit a mistake. 
For a moment he was too eternally flabbergasted 
for words; this sudden development, the appearance 
of a new and unknown suspect, floundered him 
helplessly in a sea of bewilderment. 

Possibility of Victor Sarbella’s innocence en¬ 
dangered his triumph and put the brakes on his 
ego, for, by that mental process which makes 
men heroes in their own eyes. Ham Griggs had 
given himself a good deal more credit than he 
was really entitled to. He forgot that it had 
been the newspaper reporter’s well-functioning 
memory, identifying the slain woman as “the girl 
in the Sarbella case,” which had supplied the 
vital link, the possible motive, and that, except 


206 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


for Wiggly, there would have been nothing upon 
which to have detained the artist. 

Not that Wiggly Price begrudged the constable 
feeding his vanity fat; for Wiggly was interested 
only in the story and concerned not at all with 
whatever transitory fame might attach to the 
solver of the mystery. Give Wiggly the story, 
and he was willing that Constable Griggs should 
monopolize the credit. 

Sergeant John Henry Tish, realizing the im¬ 
portance that attached to a positive identification 
of the automatic, examined it still more carefully, 
reaffirming an already firm conviction that it was 
his. His own excitement, too, matched that of 
the newspaper reporter. 

“There’s no doubt about it, gents,” he declared. 
“It’s my gun.” 

“Huh!” grunted Constable Griggs, at last finding 
his tongue. “There must be hundreds of guns 
like that, as much the same as peas in a pod.” 
His skepticism was, of course, backed by the 
wish that it be a mistake. “Mebbe it looks like 
your gun, mebbe it has got a busted place on the 
butt plates, but that don’t prove-” 

“A cop gets pretty well acquainted with a gun 
when he’s packed it as long as I’ve packed this 
one. There’s a lot of little marks on it that I 
recognize. I know it’s my gat, and the serial 
number will prove it; the department keeps a record 
of the nmnbers.” 

“It’s a police regulation, all right,” grunted 
Wiggly Price. “I ought to have noticed that 
the first thing, but I didn’t. I don’t think there’s 
much chance of Sergeant Tish being mistaken. 



A QUEER JUMBLE 


207 


constable, especially since the deserted taxi gives 
us proof that Haskins did come to Ardmore last 
night.” 

“Well, I ain’t sayin’ that it ain’t, but at the 
same time I ain’t sayin’ that it is,” growled Ham 
Griggs. “Nor am I goin’ to admit that Sarbella 
didn t do the killin’; if he’s so all-fired innocent, 
what makes him keep his mouth shut so tight? 
If you think I’m goin’ to turn him loose just 
because somebody else might have done it-” 

“Oh, I’m not trying to have you turn Sarbella 
out of jail, constable,” said Wiggly. “I’ve no 
interest in him, personal or otherwise, beyond seeing 
you put hands on the guilty man. Detain him long 
as you like, so far as I’m concerned.” 

“You betcha life I’ll detain him long as I like!” 
blustered the constable with a glare. 

The rotund Sergeant Tish stood impatiently to 
his feet, shoving the automatic into the empty 
holster, where it belonged. 

“It sure looks like Haskins is wanted now 
for two croaks instead of one,” he said gruffly. 
“Suppose we make tracks for the place where 
the woman was killed. Just wasting time here.” 

“Huh!” sneered Constable Griggs. “You don’t 
think the feller you’re after will still be out to 
Greenacres ?” 

“Hardly,” answered Tish, “but we’ve got to start 
from there, anyhow. Haskins won’t get far, I 
guess; there’s already a general alarm out for 
him. When they do nab him, I aim to have the 
goods on him—right.” 

“Yes, we’ve got to go back to the Gilmore 


208 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


place” agreed Wiggly. “We’ve got an entirely 
new angle to work on now.” 

Ham Griggs, still voicing a half-hearted protest, 
perhaps further embittered that this New York 
detective was now upon the scene and would 
probably try to take all the glory for himself, 
got grudgingly to his feet. The three men left 
Borough Hall and went out to the street. 

“Confound it!” complained Wiggly. “It must 
he a two-mile walk out there to Greenacres. Why 
didn’t I keep that taxi? And there’s a real hurry, 
too. Where can we get a machine, constable?” 

“Presley’s garage—^if Presley has opened up,” 
Ham Griggs answered sourly. “It’s right around 
the corner.” 

“Ain’t necessary,” said Sergeant Tish. “I came 
out in one of the department’s flivvers. Got it 
parked just around the corner. It’s only a two- 
seater, but I guess we can manage it. The main 
thing is to get out to that place quick as we 
can.” 

He led the way around the corner, where stood 
the roadster with “Police Dept.” painted upon 
the sides. The New York plain-clothes man got 
in first, wedging his portly form in behind the 
steering wheel. Constable Griggs, too, was a man 
of considerable bulk so that, even without Wiggly, 
all available seat room was occupied. 

“The running board for mine,” Price said cheer¬ 
fully and climbed up. “Let ’er go, sergeant.” 

Tish started the engine, manipulated the foot 
pedals somewhat awkwardly, and the little car 
started forward with a violence that almost jerked 
the newspaper man to the ground; to save himself 


A QUEER JUMBLE 209 

what might have been a bad spill, one arm en¬ 
circled Ham Griggs’ neck, adding to the latter’s 
ill humor. 

“I’ve always heard that you newspaper fellers 
was a pesky nuisance,” he muttered. 

If Wiggly was tempted to a retort, he gave no 
signs of it, merely murmured an apology. There 
was a moment of silence, the constable frowning 
deeply. 

“We do know why Sarbella would have killed 
her,” he argued; “because she vamped his brother 
and drove him to suicide, but why would this 
Haskins feller have done it? Answer me that!” 

“Haskins is a hard guy,” growled Sergeant Tish. 
“He wouldn’t have needed much motive, that bird. 
Look at the way he clouted me over the head 
with his handcuffs. Like as not he had some 
sort of hold on her. The murdered woman must 
of been the swell dame that Haskins told Eighth 
Avenue Annie was his sister. See?” 

“That ain’t nothin’ but guessin’,” said Constable 
Griggs. “How are you goin’ to know if she was?” 

“It may be guessing, but it’s a darn’ good guess,” 
replied Tish. “And, far as that’s concerned, we 
can have Annie down to look at the body and 
tell us whether or not it was the skirt who come 
to her place and handed Haskins some dough.” 

“But why would Haskins have killed her?” 
persisted Ham Griggs. 

“Well, I can’t say positive as to that,” answered 
Tish, “but it would be a pretty safe bet to figure 
it out. When I dropped in on him at old Annie’s 
yesterday afternoon, he had to beat it in such a 
hurry that he left his money under the mattress; 


210 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


perhaps he made tracks for this Greenacres place 
to get money. Y’see, constable, she was going to 
bring him some more jack Wednesday—which is 
to-day—but I spoiled that. Since she couldn’t come 
to him with the dough, he come to her. Like as 
not she was a little slow in coming across with 
the money, and he croaked her.” 

“Robbery, huh?” demanded Ham Griggs. “Ain’t 
that what you’re drivin’ at?” 

Sergeant Tish admitted that this was his tentative 
theory regarding the murder at Greenacres. The 
constable’s grim face broke into a triumphant 
smile, for he had led the New York detective into 
a deliberate trap. 

“That ain’t no good,” he said with a grunt of 
satisfaction. “There wasn’t no robbery, Mr. Tish, 
for the Gilmore woman was still wearin’ her 
jewelry when we found her dead. There must 
have been diamonds and the like worth a good 
many hundred dollars. Wouldn’t he have taken 
the jewelry? I ask you, wouldn’t he?” 

“Well, I didn’t know about that,” answered 
Sergeant Tish, looking not so crestfallen as Griggs 
would have liked. “That seemed the most plausible, 
and it’s still not impossible, for Haskins may have 
taken money and have been too pressed for time— 
you haven’t told me anything about the facts, you 
know—^to strip off the jewelry. 

“Anyhow what we do know is that Haskins did 
go to Greenacres, and that murder was done with 
the gun which was in his possession. If Haskins 
didn’t kill her, then—^how did the murderer get 
this automatic pistol?” 

Constable Griggs could not, of course, answer 


A QUEER JUMBLE 


211 


this question. Wiggly Price, his feet planted firmly 
upon the running board of the little car, and his 
fingers wrapped tightly about the rods supporting 
the top, thought of something which added, to his 
mind, a fresh puzzler to the whole mysterious 
business. 

“There’s something else. Sergeant Tish,” he said, 
raising his voice so that he might be heard above 
the sound of the motor and the rush of the wind, 
as they hurried along. “If Haskins killed her, why 
did he leave the gun behind? He is a desperate 
man, already in open flight to escape one charge 
of murder, and a man in a position such as his 
would want to be armed. Chances are that he 
would shoot it out before submitting to capture. 
You say that Haskins is a clever crook, and-” 

“Used to be,” broke in Tish. “Been going down 
grade for some time. Booze—dope, too, likely as 
not.” 

“If he had any head on him at all,” continued 
Wiggly, “he would have known that there was 
every chance in the world in that gun being traced. 
There’s something else. The gun was planted be¬ 
side the dead woman’s body, an effort to give it 
every appearance of suicide. Why should Haskins 
have done that?” 

“I wish you’d give me the low-down on the 
case,” urged Sergeant Tish. “How do you expect 
me to get an 3 ^where when you gimme the facts in 
jerks and starts like that?” 

Constable Griggs’ face wore an elated expression 
as he listened to Wiggly. The reporter had declared 
his positive conviction of Haskins’ guilt, and yet 


212 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

here he was shooting his own theory full of 
holes. 

“So you’ve come back to my way of thinkin’, 
eh?” he crowed. “Come on now and admit that 
I put the handcuffs on the right man. The Eye- 
talian done it. Sure he did. I was right all 
the time.” 

The reporter’s ears twitched meditatively. 

“I’m not saying positively that Haskins didn’t 
kill the woman,” he answered. “But I do say 
that I can’t understand why he should have been 
so anxious for it to appear suicide. It’s very 
easy to understand a possible link between this 
crook and Gilmore’s wife; she began life, I think 
I told you, on the fringe of the underworld. Oh, 
I admit that I’m stumped—^bad, but there must 
he a hidden something, somewhere, that will put 
us right.” 

The detective sergeant’s car was now at that 
point of the road where it ran in front of the 
Gilmore place. 

“Turn in here. Sergeant Tish,” grunted the con¬ 
stable, as they neared the driveway, and Tish turned 
the wheel sharply. Before they had quite reached 
the house, Tish stopped the machine. 

“Listen, gents,” he said crisply, “let’s get down 
to cases. It looks to me as if Haskins did the 
job here at this place, although, as our reporter 
friend says, it is queer that he left the gat behind. 
I want to put my mitts on Don Haskins, whether 
he did the croak or not. And you wanna get hold 
of the same bird, for, if he didn’t do it, you want 
him to tell you how this gun of mine got away 
from him. 


213 


A QUEER JUMBLE 

“I want Haskins, and you want Haskins. Cir¬ 
cumstances puts us in the same boat, and we ought 
to work together on this business.” He suppressed 
a wise grin, as he saw the look of displeasure 
on Griggs’ face. “Aw, don’t worry, constable. I’m 
not going to butt in on your territory. I’m not 
tryin’ to steal your thunder.” 

Sergeant Tish paused for a reply. 

“Hmnph!” grunted Ham Griggs, not finding any 
valid excuse for refusing this offer of cooperation. 

“About all I know to date,” pursued Sergeant 
Tish, “is that a woman was bumped off with my 
gun, the one that Haskins lifted from me, when 
he handed me a knock-out at Eighth Avenue 
Annie’s, that the pistol was left beside the body 
to make it look like suicide, and that you’ve gathered 
in a guy named Sarbella. If I’m goin’ to help 
you any. I’ve got to have the low-down. See?” 

“Yes, constable, we’d better tell him,” said Wiggly 
Price, as Griggs remained silent. “If you’ve no 
objection. I’ll give him a brief outline of the 
facts.” 

“All right,” agreed Griggs, and Price related to 
Tish the facts in the case. 

Sergeant Tish listened thoughtfully to Wiggly 
Price’s digest of the tragedy, and, puffing out his 
plump cheeks to a balloonlike roundness, nodded 
his head. 

“It’s sure a queer jumble, ain’t it?” he grunted. 
“I don’t blame you, Griggs, for thinkin’ this Sarbella 
fellow pulled the job, but how would Sarbella 
have got hold of the gun? No, it still looks 
like Don Haskins to me. Nobody else to be 
suspected, I suppose?” 


214 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Wiggly thought of the black hairpin and that 
germ of suspicion which Etta Griggs had planted 
in his mind by telling him of the suspected 
one-sided romance between Joan Sheridan and 
her stepbrother. He hesitated a moment and de¬ 
cided to keep this to himself, at least for the 
present. Let Sarbella and Don Haskins, walking 
so unexpectedly into the mystery, be eliminated 
before other complications were added. He side¬ 
stepped this question by ignoring it entirely. 

“Surely,” he said, “if Bates had let Haskins into 
the house, he would have mentioned it.” 

“Why don’t we ask him whether he did or not?” 
grunted Constable Griggs, for at this moment the 
butler had stepped out of the house into the 
warming sunlight of the wide porch. 


CHAPTER XXI 


A CRY OF TERROR 

T he three men left the little police car where 
it stood and walked the remaining few yards 
to the house. Bates saw their coming; as a matter 
of fact, he had from within noticed their approach, 
and he had come out to meet them. Despite his 
evident weariness, he was patiently eager for any 
news. Constable Griggs, quickly forestalling any 
move that might tend to crowd himself out of 
the major role, planted himself directly in front 
of the butler, frowning sternly. 

“When was the last time you saw the dead 
woman alive?” he demanded. 

“Immediately after dinner,” answered Bates; “she 
went directly upstairs, and I did not see her again 
imtil—until she was dead.” 

“How long had you been in bed when it hap¬ 
pened?” 

“It was some time, sir; at least two hours, I 
am sure.” 

“What I’m hittin’ at is this,” explained Griggs; 
“we’ve got some new dope that may mean some¬ 
thing, and then again it may not. Did you let 
a strange man into the house last night, or did 
you see any strange man prowlin’ about the 
place?” 

“I—I don’t believe I understand,” murmured 
Bates. “A strange man, sir—^prowling about the 
house?” 


216 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“That’s what I said,” grunted the constable, 
“and it’s evident that you didn’t. Was the doors 
locked?” 

“Absolutely,” Bates answered firmly. “I always 
lock up before turning in for the night. I have 
been very careful about that, especially since the 
burglar scare that we had last year. 

“Then the man couldn’t have got into the house 
unless you had let him in?” pressed Griggs. 

“The woman herself might have let him in, 
constable,” interposed Sergeant Tish. “If the butler 
had gone to bed she might have done it without 
any one hearing her.” 

“Huh!” retorted Ham Griggs, with a quickei^ 
flash of reasoning than might have been expected. 
“How would she have known Haskins was about, 
unless he rung the doorbell, or called her on 
the phone, or something like that? Until you. 
Sergeant Tish, trapped ’im in that place in New 
York, he didn’t know his own self that he was 
cornin’ to Greenacres.” 

“I am positive that there was no rmg of any 
sort, either doorbell or telephone, until Mr. Gilmore 
got me up to let him in—just before the shot,” 
offered Bates. “Any sort of ringing would have 
awakened me. But this strange man—I do not 
understand. Who-” 

“Might as well tell you, I suppose,” grunted 
the constable. “We’ve found out that the murder 
gun most likely belongs to this man”—he jerked 
his head toward Tish—“who is a detective from 
New York. The gun was taken away from him 
by a feller named Haskins, who swiped a taxi 
in New York to make his get-away, and that same 



217 


A CRY OF TERROR 

taxi was found by myself out on the road, ’bout 
one and a half or two miles from here. So_” 

“Then it isn’t Mr. Sarbella’s gun?” broke in 
Bates with a gasp of surprise. 

“That don’t mean I’ve turned Sarbella out of 
jail, not by a whole lot, it don’t,” growled Ham 
Griggs. “He might have got hold of the gun 

somehow; he might-” But, being unable to 

supply any further theory of Sarbella’s guilt, his 
voice stopped abruptly. There was a moment of 
silence, broken by Bates. 

“Did I tell you about the letter?” he asked in 
his thin voice. “No, I think not. It was Doctor 
Bushnell that I told about the letter.” 

“What letter?” demanded Griggs. 

“The letter that came for Mrs. Gilmore on Mon¬ 
day,” supplied the butler. “I considered it most 
peculiar at the time, a very dirty envelope, ad¬ 
dressed with a lead pencil. She seemed much 
upset over it, although she tried to pass it off.” 

“It might have been from Haskins at that,” 
spoke up Wiggly Price, and he turned to Sergeant 
Tish. “It was yesterday—Tuesday—^that you cor¬ 
nered Haskins in the place you call Eighth Avenue 
Annie’s. What day was it that the swell-dressed 
woman called on the man at that place?” 

“Monday,” answered Tish. 

“Ah!” exclaimed the newspaper man trium¬ 
phantly, and his ears wiggled a bit. “It was Monday 
that the murdered woman got this letter that Bates 
tells about. Bates, did she go to New York on 
Monday ?” 

“I don’t think to New York, but she did drive 



218 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


somewhere in the motor—out into the country, I 
believe she said.” 

“Yes, so she said,” nodded Wiggly with meaning 
emphasis. “That doesn‘t make it true that she 
didn’t go to New York. Any one accompany her 
on this motor trip?” 

“She went alone; she returned late in the after¬ 
noon.” 

“Say!” exploded Ham Griggs with a glare. “One 
would think you was the officer in charge the 
way you’re bustin’ in with all these questions.” 

“Just one question more, Constable Griggs,” urged 
Wiggly. “I’m not trying to be officious. Bates, 
let us suppose for a moment that this man, Don 
Haskins, did get into the house in some way or 
another, would he have had time to get down the 
stairs before you and Mr. Gilmore rushed up— 
and then let himself out of the house, while you 
and Mr. Gilmore were upstairs?” 

Bates debated this question for a moment and 
then shook his head positively. 

“He would not,” he replied; “but he might have 
easily found a place to conceal himself in one 
of the rooms upstairs. There is one bit of detail 
that I may have forgotten to mention. When 
Mr. Gilmore and I were about halfway up the 
stairway, I am positive that I heard a door slam 
very loudly—^very loudly, indeed.” 

“Huh!” grunted the constable. “That don’t mean 
anything much. It might just as well have been 
Sarbella rushin’ back to his room after havin’ shot 
her.” And then he indulged in another bit of 
reasoning which did him credit. “If it was the 
Gilmore woman who went to see Haskins in New 


A CRY OF TERROR 


219 


York, we know she wasn’t too afraid of him to 
go see him in that cheap joint Sergeant Tish told 
us about. And yet she was afraid of the one 
who come in on her last night—^because she 
screamed. Why did she scream? I’ll tell you 
why she screamed; it was because she knowed 

that Sarbella had come to kill her! Just put that 

in your pipe and smoke it a while.” 

“Not a bad deduction,” nodded Sergeant Tish, 
“but the thing that puzzles all of us is—^how did 
Sarbella get the gun away from Haskins? We’re 
just wastin’ good time arguing back and forth. 
Let’s go upstairs and see if we can’t pick up 

something new.” 

“The—the body has been removed,” the butler 
informed them. “The undertaker left an hour 

since. Doctor Bushnell was very careful that 
nothing else should be disturbed, and the room 
is locked. Doctor Bushnell-” 

“And took the key off with him, I suppose,” 
growled Constable Griggs. 

“Doctor Bushnell, as I started to say,” went on 
Bates, “is still here. Mr. Gilmore seems to be 
in quite a bad way, and the doctor is looking after 
him.” 

“We’ll go on upstairs,” declared Griggs. “Tell 
the doc that we want him to come right on up 
and let us into that room.” 

Wiggly Price did not follow them immediately; he 
loitered downstairs until Bates had delivered the 
message to the doctor and had returned. The 
butler, luckily for Wiggly, had not been told the 
reporter’s true interest in the case, else he would 
have doubtless guarded his tongue most carefully. 



220 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“It’s a bad business, Bates,” said the newspaper 
man to begin the conversation. 

“A terrible business,” agreed the butler. “You 
don’t think that Mr. Sarbella killed her?” 

“You do?” 

“What else could I believe, with all the queer 
happenings? But I hope not—as much for Mr. 
Gilmore’s sake as anything, sir; he seems to take 
Mr. Sarbella’s arrest almost as hard as the murder.” 

“She was a bad lot, your master’s slain wife. 
Bates.” 

“I am not surprised at that,” murmured the 
servant. “I sensed that she wasn’t the right sort. 
I think we all realized that—except Mr. Kirklan.” 

“Of course he wouldn’t; she was a remarkably 
beautiful woman, and he was in love with her. 
Quite a sudden marriage, I understand.” 

“Very sudden; a surprise and a shock to all of 
us.” 

“It’s much too bad. Bates, that Mr. Gilmore 
did not marry a woman of the right kind—^Miss 
Joan, say.” Wiggly’s tone was disarmingly care¬ 
less, and Bates did not understand that information 
was being sought. 

“Yes, it certainly is,” agreed the butler earnestly, 
falling straightway into the little trap. “We were 
all hoping that it wouldn’t turn out that way. All 
of us, except Mr. Kirklan, could see with half an 
eye that Miss Joan was in love with him, even if 
she is his stepsister; it cut her up terribly when 
she came home from Europe and found her here. 
Not only here, sir, but in Miss Joan’s own room.” 

The room where the murder was committed?” 

“Exactly, sir; that was Miss Joan’s old room— 


221 


A CRY QF TERROR 

the one that she had occupied since she was quite a 
small girl. When she came back I didn’t have the 
heart to tell her about the room. ‘Rates,’ she says to 
me, ‘take the bags up to my room.’ And I didn’t 
have the heart to tell her—knowing how much store 
she put by it.” 

This information, verification of what Etta Griggs 
had told him, might mean something or nothing, 
Wiggly knew; probably nothing. It was just that 
he had that avidity of the trained newspaper 
reporter for all the facts, because experience had 
taught him it is often the smallest detail which, 
in the light of other things, achieves prime im¬ 
portance. And there was the black hairpin; he 
was thinking of that again. 

That could not be overlooked. 

At this moment Doctor Rushnell appeared from 
the room on the first floor, where he had placed 
Kirklan Gilmore, and whose bedside he was just 
leaving. 

“Gilmore is in a bad, nervous state,” he imparted 
after a nod to the reporter. “You saw him up¬ 
stairs before you left for the village; he was bad 
enough then, but I’m afraid of a complete collapse 
—one of those high-strung, emotional chaps, you 
know. If his thoughts are allowed to torture him, 
they might even drive him to insanity; he must 
be kept quiet. Poor devil! It’s much too bad that 
a love like that should have to be wasted on a 
woman like her. Then, to make matters worse, 
to make the shock double, the man whom he 
considered his friend-” 

He paused, remembering the cigarette butt that 
Wiggly had taken down to the village. 



222 THE PORCEJi^IN MASK 

“What did you discover?” 

“That it was not Victor Sarhella’s cigarette that 
had been dropped upon the rug. More than that, 
doctor, we’ve got another suspect now.” 

“Another suspect? What other suspect could 
there be?” ^ 

Briefly Wiggly Price told the physician of Ser¬ 
geant Tish’s appearance at Borough Hall, his iden¬ 
tification of the murder gun, and the other matters 
which turned the finger of suspicion so strongly 
toward Don Haskins, the crook who had already 
been in flight from one murder charge. This 
information left Doctor Bushnell almost speechless. 

“It’s astounding!” he gasped. “Positively astound¬ 
ing! It—it does have a plausible sound, for a 
fact.” 

“The thing that bothers us,” Wiggly told him, 
“is why Haskins should have been so careful to 
have it appear suicide. Surely no one besides 
Helen Gilmore knew that he was inside the house. 
Obviously he came for money—he had a hold 
of some kind on her; probably knew about her 
past and was levying blackmail; but there’s no 
evidence that he got any money, and he didn’t 
touch her jewelry.” 

“You can’t spend jewelry ‘^thout first pawning 
or selling it,” the doctor said shrewdly; “possibly 
he realized that it would be too dangerous for him 
to risk appearing in a pawnshop. Perhaps he did 
get money.” 

“He wouldn’t have had to kill her for that,” 
countered Wiggly. “If he did know of her past, 
this knowledge alone was sufficient to extort money. 
He wouldn’t have had to kill her. But let’s be 


A CRY W TERROR 


223 


getting upstairs. Griggs and Sergeant Tish are 
waiting for you to let them into the murder 
room. Now that we’re working from a new 
angle, it’s best to go over the ground again, and 
we’ve daylight now.” 

Th^hysician nodded and started for the stairs. 

“The crook’s guilt would be the most satisfactory 
solution,” he said, “but it did look bad for Sar- 
bella. Is he still being detained?” 

“Yes. You can’t blame Griggs for holding him; 
the murder isn’t solved yet, and it won’t be, to 
my notion, until a number of points are cleared 
up,” answered Wiggly. 

As they reached the second floor. Ham Griggs 
and Sergeant Tish were waiting, the former with 
considerable impatience. Doctor Bushnell unlocked 
the door of the murder chamber and threw it 
wide. The body of Helen Gilmore, as the butler 
had informed them, had been removed, but the 
chaise longue, its creton upholstering stained with 
dark splotches, bore its mute testimony of the 
tragedy. 

“Here we are,” grunted the constable, “but I 
dunno what you expect to find more’n has already 
been found.” 

Sergeant Tish projected his rotund form to the 
center of the room, glanced about briefly, and 
then went to the windows, raising the shades to 
their full height so that all possible light would 
be admitted. At the second window the ripped 
curtain dangled before him and drew his attention. 

“It would be my guess,” he said, pointing to the 
curtain, “that this means one of two things: 
Either it was done in a struggle with the murdered 


224 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


woman, or when the murderer beat it through the 
window,” He paused a moment and added: “Still, 
it doesn’t look as if he’d have taken the time to 
shut the window behind him.” 

He peered through the glass to the roof of the 
porch, puffed out his round cheeks, and quickly 
threw up the sash. There had been no rain in 
weeks, and the porch shingles were covered with 
a coating of dust. This film was broken where 
Don Haskins’ body had wiggled upward from 
the cornice in his careful approach to the window, 
and, in more places than one, the imprint of the 
man’s stockinged feet showed. At Tish’s grunt 
of elation. Constable Griggs dashed forward, with 
Doctor Bushnell and Wiggly behind him. 

“Somebody either entered or left this room 
through the window!” exclaimed Tish. “There’s 
his trail in the dust on the shingles.” 

“Entered I” said the newspaper reporter, his 
ears twitching. “You can see that those footprints 
—and the man was in his stockings—are all turned 
this way. Yes, he came in by the window, but 
he didn’t leave by the window. Another check 
in Sarbella’s favor. 

“The man must have torn the curtain here, 
as he came into the room.” 

Constable Griggs gulped, but said nothing. Ser¬ 
geant Tish bent forward and examined the pane 
of the raised sash. Clear and distinct there were 
the prints of a man’s fingers—on the inside of the 
glass. These prints were punctuated with down¬ 
ward streaks, as if the fingers had slipped, but 
the whorls had not been obliterated; in fact they 
were clear and distinct. 


225 


A CRY OF TERROR 

Tish reached his pudgy fingers to the breast 
pocket of his coat and drew forth a Bertillon 
card which he had borrowed from headquarters, 
and which bore, in addition to rouges’ gallery 
photographs, full-face and profile, of Don Haskins, 
the crook’s finger prints. 

He hobbled his head hack and forth, getting 
the light at the best possible angle, and then he 
compared the finger prints on the window glass 
with those upon the card. He gave a grunt of 
satisfaction and nodded his head in affirmation. 

“Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins’ 
finger prints on the window. Good thing I brought 
this card along, huh?” It is hard for a man with 
a chubby face like Tish’s to look grim, hut his 
voice certainly was grim, as he added, “Haskins 
is wanted now for two murders. The job now is— 
find Haskins.” 

Wiggly Price leaned closer, and he, too, observed 
that the finger prints were on the inside of the 
pane. 

“That means,” he said, “that Haskins came in 
the window and closed it behind him. Those 
smudges at the top of the prints show that his 
fingers slipped a little on the glass, and that his 
pressure was downward. And, had he been raising 
the window, the finger prints would have been 
at the top of the sash rather than at the bottom.” 

“That’s true,” Tish agreed absently, returning 
the Bertillon card to his pocket and turning away 
from the window. “Haskins must have climbed 
to the roof from the porch below. Guess we’ll find 
evidence of that, too, on the porch pillars, although 
it’s not particularly important how he got up; the 


226 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


thing that counts is that he did, that the man 
was in the house, in this very room.” 

Ham Griggs realized that this new evidence, 
the incontrovertible proof of the finger prints, 
completely knocked the legs out from under his 
persistent theory of Sarbella’s guilt, and for the 
moment he surrendered to a stunned and bewildered 
helplessness. 

Doctor Bushnell’s eyes remained upon the win- 
dowpane, with an intent and fascinated interest. 

“Most remarkable!” he murmured. “How much 
can he proven by such a small thing as the touch 
of a man’s finger! The one witness, I understand, 
that cannot lie. But what is the next move?” 

“Find Don Haskins,” Tish answered promptly. 

“And that’s a big order,” sighed Wiggly Price. 
“The man’s probably miles away from Greenacres 
by now. However there’s nothing like being thor¬ 
ough, and, if Constable Griggs can get a posse 
together- 

“Huh!” snorted the Constable. “You don’t think 
he’d still be bangin’ anywhere around Ardmore?” 

“That depends on whether he got hold of any 
money,” replied Sergeant Tish. “He was broke 
when he left New York, y’know.” He took a step 
across the room and bent forward, as his foot 
crunched down upon a piece of the broken vase 
on the floor beside the table. He picked it up 
and held it in his fingers. 

“Haskins probably lurched against the table and 
knocked it off,” said Wiggly, explaining what it 
was. Tish glanced with slight interest at the 
shattered bit of porcelain and tossed it down. It 



A CRY OF TERROR 227 

did, of course, seem too trivial a thing for any 
serious consideration. 

“We’ve put in a pretty good quarter of an hour 
here,” grunted Tish, and I guess we’ve done about 
all- Good Lord! What was that?” 

From out in the hallway there had come to the 
ears of the four men the sound of a choking, terri¬ 
fied cry, a jarring, dull thud, a rending crash of 
broken glass. And then—silence. 


CHAPTER XXII 


WHAT THE COOK SAW 

P ERE is no drama greater than the drama of 
life. The actors are more than often thrust into 
roles that are not of their choosing, and they 
respond to cues that they do not recognize as cues, 
blindly obeying the director as he plunges them 
into unsought situations. 

Mrs. Rogart, the Gilmore cook, who came to 
Greenacres each morning and returned to her 
home on the outskirts of Ardmore each evening, was 
in the kitchen; and, althought it was baking day, 
not so much as a cup of flour had been sifted. 
She had arrived shortly after daybreak, to be 
greeted with news of the murder, and immediately 
she gave herself over to intermittent outbursts 
of weeping. Not that Mrs. Bogart, wide of hips, 
ample of bosom and stolid of countenance, with 
straight, black hair brushed severely back from 
her low and usually damp forehead, had any great 
feeling of bereavement; but, for all of her phleg¬ 
matic aspect, the cook was given to strong emo¬ 
tions. At the funeral of a comparative stranger, 
for instance, it was the sound of her sobs which 
arose above the muffled grief of the immediate 
family. 

So Mrs. Bogart, except for brewing a bit of 
breakfast tea and toasting some slices of bread— 
badly burned, at that—^neglected her kitchen work 
and gave way to her emotional nature. From Bates 


WHAT THE COOK SAW 


229 


she had learned that the undertaker had arrived, 
and that “the new Mrs. Gilmore” had been, as 
she phrased it, “laid out” in one of the spare bed¬ 
rooms on the second floor. 

Now, Mrs. Bogart, her attendance at funerals 
amounting to an obsession, had gazed into the 
face of death innumerable times, but she had never 
known the thrill of looking into the features of 
one who had been murdered. People about Ardmore 
were in the habit of dying prosaically in their 
beds. This was an opportunity that might never 
come to her again; and well-to-do folks, she had 
observed, frequently had their funerals conducted 
privately, turning back the pryingly curious. 

For some time Mrs. Bogart, whose place was 
strictly the kitchen, and who had no other house¬ 
hold duties, had been trying to think up an excuse 
to visit the second floor, considering that this might 
offer her an opportunity of viewing the dead woman. 
Not possessing a particularly agile mind, it took 
her some little time to arrive at this bit of pretense, 
and she wouldn’t have thought of it then except 
for some empty fruit jars. And, while the jars 
might have better gone to the basement, Mrs. 
Bogart craftily decided to carry them upstairs to 
the third floor and into the seldom-used store¬ 
room. 

“Goodness knows,” she murmured, “I’ve been 
threatenin’ for days upon days to get ’em out of 
the kitchen.” 

Straightway she mounted to a chair, took the 
fruit jars from the shelf where they had been 
temporarily placed, used a dish cloth in improvising 
a sling which would carry the full ten of them. 


230 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


and started for the third floor. At some time or 
another there had been a back stairs to the Gilmore 
house, but this had been closed off in making 
some modernizing alterations, so that Mrs. Bogart 
perforce had to wend her way to the reception hall 
and up the wide front stairway—hoping that Bates 
would not see her and order her back to her 
own domain. 

Bates, however, did not appear to interrupt her 
little pilgrimage of morbid curiosity. She reached 
the second floor and, having to pass the room 
wherein Helen Gilmore had been shot to death, 
paused for a moment outside the narrowly open 
door, as she sought in vain to get anything like a 
good look inside. And, while she could not see 
much, her ears certainly got her a thrill, for it 
was at this moment that Sergeant Tish had said: 
“Yep, this clinches it, gents. These are Haskins’ 
finger prints on the window. Good thing I brought 
this card along, huh? Haskins is wanted now for 
two murders. The job now is—find Haskins.” 

Mrs. Bogart’s eyes bulged, and the empty fruit 
jars came perilously near crashing to the floor. 
Two murders! What did they mean? Who else 
has been murdered, and who was Haskins? Up 
to the moment of her last talk with Bates about 
the tragedy all suspicion had been leveled at 
Sarbella. 

She tarried a moment, but there was nothing of 
the conversation on the other side of the door to 
enlighten her; not wishing to run the risk of being 
caught at eavesdropping, she moved on down the 
hall toward the stairs, the top of the house, and 
the seldom-used storeroom. 


WHAT THE COOK SAW 


231 


The entrance to the third floor stairway was in¬ 
closed, and it was reached by means of a door. 
Mrs. Bogart’s hand went out to the knob; her 
strong fingers closed about it with a muscular 
grip, and then a startled gasp sounded on her lips, 
and a chill swept over her body. The door had 
yielded a bare inch when she felt a retarding 
pressure, holding it shut against her. Some one 
was on the other side! 

“Mebbe—^mebbe it’s just stuck a little,” she mut¬ 
tered in a gulping whisper. “Mebbe I imagined it.” 
She braced her body, took a fresh and determined 
grips on the knob, and tried it again. Under 
exertion of this strong pull the door, still in the 
grasp of that opposing, unseen force, came toward 
her a bare inch or so, revealing to her staring 
eyes, indistinct in the shadows of the inclosed 
stairs, a bleary, unshaven face—a face hideously 
haggard, terrifying. 

Mrs. Bogart staggered back with a choking, 
frightened cry upon her lips; the fruit jars crashed 
to the floor, with a thud and the sound of splinter¬ 
ing glass, and the woman herself toppled over 
in a dead faint. From the side of her face there 
gushed a stream of blood, where the ragged edge 
of a broken jar had slashed the flesh. After the 
woman’s cry, the four men in the room up the 
hall stood staring at each other for a brief moment. 

“What’s happened now?” gasped Wiggly Price, 
and Constable Griggs was too utterly stupefied to 
make a sound. 

“It sounds like a woman’s scream,” said Doctor 
Bushnell, looking no less dazed than the rest. 

Sergeant Tish was the first to leap into motion. 


232 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


projecting his pudgy body out into the hall with 
the other three at his heels. At the sight of 
the prostrate Mrs. Bogart, surrounded hy broken 
and unbroken fruit jars, with the blood still 
streaming from her face, the New York detective 
stopped dead in his tracks. 

“WhaCs this?” he shouted. “Who is this woman, 
and what’s happened to her?” 

Constable Griggs edged forward and made a 
number of queer sounds before he finally found 
voice. 

“It—it’s Mrs. Bogart—she that does the cookin’ 
for the Gilmores!” he gulped. “She’s all bloody. 
Do—do you reckon that she’s been murdered, 
too?” 

Doctor Bushnell brushed past and knelt quickly 
to the floor at the side of the unconscious woman. 

“She’s not dead!” exclaimed Wiggly Price, noting 
the rapid rise and fall of Mrs. Bogart’s bosom. 

“Nor badly hurt, I think,” said the physician, 
as he made a rapid examination. “The blood here 
is from a superficial wound; she’s been cut by this 
broken glass. I wonder what has happened to her?” 
He jerked his head toward the newspaper man. 
“Get my medicine kit. Price,” he commanded. 
“You’ll find it downstairs; I left it on the table 
in the library.” 

Wiggly dashed down the stairs in instant re¬ 
sponse. Yes, what had happened to this woman 
whom Griggs identified as the Gilmore cook? Was 
this another angle to complicate the Greenacres 
tangle? 

Passing through the hall into the library he 
heard a familiar voice; it was “Tip” Gregory, a 


WHAT THE COOK SAW 


233 


star reporter for a rival New York newspaper. 
The Transcript, pleading with the butler for ad¬ 
mittance and information, and Bates was sternly 
refusing him either. Wouldn’t Gregory have 
gnashed his teeth in baffled rage if he had known 
that Wiggly Price had things so sweetly to him¬ 
self! 

But the situation was too tense for wasting 
any time or thoughts upon what was, after all, 
only an accidental triumph. He had the silly 
Etta Griggs to thank for being here, on the 
inside of a big story, instead of spending the 
morning canvassing the other papers for a job. 
In the library was Doctor Bushnell’s medicine kit; 
he grabbed the handle of the little bag, wheeled 
and raced up the stairway again. 

Mrs. Bogart was stirring, a moan passed her lips, 
but she had not returned to consciousness. 

“Is she badly hurt, doctor?” Wiggly asked, as 
he placed the kit upon the floor. 

“No, this cut would not cause unconsciousness. 
She must either have fainted and fallen, or fainted 
because she fell. Sometimes sudden and profuse 
bleeding causes- 

The physician’s words broke off at the sound 
of a stifled cry coming from the turn of the hall, 
where the corridor led off to the wing of the 
house. Joan Sheridan, alarmed by Mrs. Bogart’s 
scream of fright, had hurriedly left her room to 
investigate. Her face told of a sleepless, harrowed 
night, and now her eyes were wide and startled 
with this threat of fresh terror. 

“Oh,” she whispered, “it’s Mrs. Bogart. In 
Heaven’s name what—what has happened now ?” 



234 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“That’s what we are not exactly certain of, 
Miss Joan,” answered Doctor Bushnell, as he cut 
a dressing for the wound in the cook’s face. 
“She must have fallen. It is nothing serious; do 
not let it agitate you.” 

Wiggly Price had looked up quickly at the name 
of “Joan,” for this was the first time that he 
had seen her, the stepsister who was so much in 
love with Kirklan Gilmore. She was not aware 
of his scrutiny, so he had ample opportunity to 
study her closely. His experience at reporting 
had given him a sort of instinctive ability to gauge 
the human emotions, and he had a feeling that 
there was more than horror in the girl’s dark eyes, 
and he read it with one brief word—fear. 

This look of fear was not dissipated by the physi¬ 
cian’s assurance that Mrs. Bogart’s injury was 
superficial. It remained, a peculiar, almost in¬ 
describable expression. 

“Your mother. Miss Joan, is resting quietly after 
the shock?” murmured Doctor Bushnell, stanching 
the flow of blood in the unconscious woman’s 
cheek. “I will see her again presently.” 

“Y-yes,” Joan Sheridan said faintly; “mother is 
sleeping, and Bates has told me that Mr. Sarbella 
had been placed under arrest.” 

“That’s true,” nodded the doctor, “hut it looks 
now that he will be released very shortly. You 
were right when you were so sure that Sarbella 
was innocent, and I have a new respect for a 
woman’s intuition. I think you’d better go back 
to your room, please.” 

But the doctor’s reassuring words seemed to have 
other than a soothing effect upon Joan; if possible. 


WHAT THE COOK SAW 


235 


her face became a shade more pale. Certainly she 
gave a violent start, and that smoldering light 
of fear leaped into a wild light of terror. 

“You mean-” The shaking whisper that 

came from her lips was hardly audible. 

“Please, Joan, please!” exclaimed the doctor. 
“This is no time for questions. Fve a fainting 
woman on my hands, and a new suspect entirely, 
a crook who got in by the window. The gun was 
his. No more questions now.” 

A gasp that seemed to be at the same time amaze¬ 
ment and relief came from the girl; a look of 
bewilderment showed in her face. Her hands, 
so tightly clenched at her sides, relaxed; swiftly 
she turned and disappeared around the bend in 
the hall. 

Wiggly Price’s ears twitched violently, for he, 
unlike the others—and he, too, would have doubtless 
overlooked it but for the black hairpin and the 
gossip Etta Griggs had given him—had observ^ed 
her agitation when told that Sarbella had practically 
been removed as a suspect, and her surprise and 
the relaxing tenseness when she learned of the 
other. 

Did this mean that she had knowledge of the 
crime, which, for reasons of her own, she had 
kept to herself? With this Wiggly linked still 
another question: Why had Joan Sheridan been 
so positive of Victor Sarbella’s innocence? For 
Wiggly was of the opinion that “woman’s intui¬ 
tion” is something greatly exaggerated. The an¬ 
swer to the latter question was in itself unim¬ 
portant; for that matter, so had Kirklan Gilmore 



236 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


been certain, to the point of vigorous protest, 
that the artist had not fired the fatal shot. 

Wiggly made up his mind then and there that, 
while Constable Griggs was searching for Don 
Haskins, he would be searching for the answer 
to Joan Sheridan’s puzzling behavior. He was 
certain there must be something behind it, a vital 
something that would have an important bearing 
on the crime. 

Doctor Bushnell had completed dressing Mrs. 
Bogart’s wound, having delayed restoratives until 
this was done. Now he was chafing her wrists 
briskly, and the woman was showing signs of 
coming to her senses. With startling suddenness 
her eyes flew open, and she sat erect; since her 
first conscious thought was a return to the moment 
of her swoon, a fresh cry of terror burst from 
her throat. It trailed off into a gurgle, as she 
realized that she was not now alone. 

“It’s all right, Mrs. Bogart,” the physician told 
her soothingly. “You’ve had a nasty fall and 
cut yourself a little on those broken jars; but 
it’s nothing to worry about.” 

“That man!” cried Mrs. Bogart. “Where—where 
did he go? It’s Heaven’s own blessing that he 
didn’t murder me in my tracks. He was peering 
out at me, and everything went dizzy black in 
front of me. I-” 

“Her head ain’t right yet,” grunted Constable 
Griggs. Mrs. Bogart, letting her heavy fingers touch 
gingerly to her bandaged face, heard the local 
officer’s skeptical remark and bridled in indignation. 

“I tell you I seen him!” she shrilled, pointing 
to the door which closed off the third-floor stairs. 



WHAT THE COOK SAW 


237 


“I seen him behind there. He was holdin’ the 
door shut on me. I was takin’ these jars up 
to the storeroom. I seen him—lookin’ out at me 
through the crack. He’s there now, if he didn’t 
run out. I tell you I seen him!” 

All four of the men exchanged quick, startled, 
almost incredulous glances. The same thought had 
leaped into all their minds. Sergeant Tish, staring 
at the closed door, mechanically hitched his gun 
holster within easier reach. 

“Do you think it’s possible, men, that she did 

see a man, and that he is-” began Doctor 

Bushnell. 

“Yes, it must he Haskins!” cried Wiggly. “Has¬ 
kins is still in the house! We dashed out into 
the hall when she screamed. The man’s had no 
chance of escape.” 

Sergeant Tish pursed his lips, frowned, and 
shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered. 
“1 can’t believe Haskins would be such a boob, 
hiding on the scene of the crime all these hours 
after the murder has been conunitted. It’s ridicu¬ 
lous.” 

Constable Ham Griggs decided he had been in 
the background long enough; events had been 
developing too fast for him to keep pace with 
them, but here was a situation that he could 
cope with. It required no deductions, only action. 
He took a decisive step forward, dragging forth 
a somewhat ancient forty-five-caliber revolver, 
which he gave a dramatic flourish. 

“Stand back!” he roared. “I’m the officer in 
charge here, and I’m goin’ up there to get my 
man!” 



CHAPTER XXIII 


THE TRAPPED RAT 

W ITH the breath wheezing noisily through his 
parted lips, which were twisted back so that 
his clenched teeth were bared, Don Haskins leaned 
tensely against the wall of the storeroom on the 
third floor of the Gilmore house. Grim and des¬ 
perate terror held him in its grip. 

“They’ve got me—they’ve got me now!” he 
groaned. “Caught like a rat in a trap!” 

Half the night and all of the morning he had 
tried in vain to slip out of the house—somewhere, 
anywhere. Each effort had been frustrated by 
the danger of discovery; at each attempt there 
had been voices or footsteps in the hall, or floating 
warningly up the stairs. Then the coming of 
daylight had made the contemplated dash all the 
more hazardous. 

He had about made up his mind to wait for 
another coming of darkness, when he had heard 
the arrival of a car, and, peering down from the 
narrow dormer window, he had seen the arrival 
of Detective Sergeant Tish. The coming of Tish 
naturally filled him with wild terror, for that 
could mean but one thing—the New York detective 
had trailed him to Greenacres! 

So, after several minutes of tortured indecision, 
he had crept down the inclosed stairs, determined 
to make a break for it. 

He could not put up a fight, for he had no 


THE TRAPPED RAT 


239 


weapon. While he had crouched at the foot 
of the stairs, ears straining in an effort to catch 
any sound of warning from the other side of the 
panel, Mrs. Bogart had turned the knob, and 

Haskins had seized it from the inside, holding 

the door fast. Then she had yanked it again, the 
eyes of the two met through the narrow crack, and 
the woman had screamed. 

For Don Haskins there had been but once choice, 
that was to hurry back to the storeroom and 

wait. There was no bolt on the door, but he 
barricaded it with a packing box filled with non¬ 
descript odds and ends, such as people relegate 

to the garret. There was no means of escape 
except the stairs; the dormer window mocked 
him with its deep, unbroken drop downward. And 
no weapon; even the clutter of stuff that half filled 
the storeroom offered him nothing that would serve 
as a cudgel. So, helpless, defenseless, muttering 
curses between his locked teeth, he waited. He 
wondered why it was so long, why the New York 
copper did not come pounding up the stairs to 
get him. His eyes were upon the door, his gaze 
intent upon the knob—watching for it to turn. 
And then he got an idea! 

The knob was held in place by a screw, and, 
for lack of a screw driver, he went to the task 
with his finger nail. The screw was set fast, and 
the nail tore down to the quick, but he did not 
notice the twinge of pain, merely attacked the 
screw with the thumb nail of the other hand. 
At last it turned, and the heavy metal knob was 
free. 

Haskins, that his shoes might make no alarming 


240 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


sound upon the bare boards of the storeroom, was 
in his stockings. Hastily he tore one of his socks 
free from his foot, dropped the doorknob into it 
and he had a deadly slung shot that he could 
swing with telling effect. Not much of a weapon, 
perhaps, but vastly better than no weapon at all. 
He put on both shoes, the one over a bare foot, 
and again waited with tense, twitching nervous¬ 
ness. 

It must have been another five minutes—to Has¬ 
kins the minutes dragged into the length of hours 
—^before he heard a voice raised to a bellow and 
the tramp of heavy feet upon the stairs. He 
flattened his body even closer to the wall, at a 
point where he would be behind the door when 
it opened, as he took a tighter grip about the 
weighted sock. 

There may have been some doubts as to Constable 
Griggs’ nimbleness of mind, but there could be no 
doubt as to his personal courage, as, yards ahead 
of Sergeant Tish, he dashed, two and three steps 
at a time, to the third floor. 

“Come on outta there an’ surrender!” roared 
Ham Griggs. “Dead or alive, Haskins—that goes for 
you!” 

But Don Haskins did not come out to surrender. 
He made not the slightest sound. Griggs again 
shouted, but still there was no response, and he 
began to share Tish’s doubts of the wanted man 
being in the house. Perhaps Mrs. Bogart’s story 
had been purely a figment of the imagination. 

Without, however, relaxing the vigilant position 
of his gun, he reached forward and tried the 
door. It moved back a little, and he met the 


THE TRAPPED RAT 


241 


obstruction of the barricading packing box. The 
constable applied the pressure of his shoulder, 
and his free hand cautiously cocked the hammer 
of the revolver. The door was forced back another 
few inches. 

The barred door, of course, was proof that the 
storeroom was occupied; he paused a moment to 
peer through the narrow opening. No signs of 
Haskins. 

“He’s here,” he yelled down the stairs to Tish, 
who was looking up from the bottom. “He’s got 
the door blocked. I’m goin’ in, and I’m goin’ in 
a-shootin’.” Again his body battered against the 
door. 

Don Haskins, his mouth parted into a terrible 
grimace, swung back his arm. As the constable’s 
head and shoulders appeared at the edge of the 
door, the sock, the metal knob stuffed wickedly in 
the toe, described a swift arc and caught Griggs 
a heavy blow on the skull. 

With a grunt he pitched forward to the floor in 
a senseless heap; the convulsion of his body pulled 
the trigger of the revolver, and its roaring, angry 
voice thundered through the upper part of the 
house. The gun slid across the boards and bumped 
against the leg of the discarded couch. 

Haskins dropped his improvised weapon and 
leaped for the gun; his body had scarcely straight¬ 
ened when Sergeant Tish came pounding and 
panting up the steps, drawn automatic in his hand. 
As Haskins whirled, he again faced this Nemesis 
who had trapped him at Eighth Avenue Annie’s. 
No word was spoken; both knew it was one or 
the other. 


242 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Haskins fired first, but only by the difference 
of a split second; the two shots rang out almost 
as one. Sergeant Tish’s shoulder became suddenly 
numb, a searing numbness, as hot lead bored the 
flash. His arm dropped limply helpless to his side, 
and a sickening nausea paled the chubby round¬ 
ness of his cheeks. 

The other man reeled on his feet and steadied 
himself against the wall. A gasping gurgle, that 
trailed off into a curse, burst through his hideously 
parted lips, and his left hand, pressing to his 
waist, became red with a trickle of crimson. 

But Haskins did not fire again; there was no 
need. Sergeant Tish’s fingers had lost all their 
strength, and the automatic clumped to the floor. 
He could offer no resistance when Haskins stumbled 
forward, cleared the body of the unconscious con¬ 
stable, and went plunging down the stairs. In 
the doorway at the foot of the steps Wiggly Price 
and Doctor Bushnell were staring upward. Haskins 
lifted the revolver menacingly. 

“Get outta my way!” he gritted. “I’ll kill the 
first man that tries to stop me.” 

It would have been a foolhardy thing to have 
opposed the flight of this armed, desperate man, 
wanted for murder, trying to beat the electric chair. 
Doctor Bushnell, clutching Wiggly Price’s arm, 
made haste to get out of Haskins’ path. Mrs. 
Bogart screamed shrilly and dashed wildly for 
the first door. She hurled herself into the room 
and braced her body against the panel. 

Haskins, as he reached the second floor, was 
reeling like a drunken man. His left hand, still 
clutching his body near the top of his trousers. 


THE TRAPPED RAT 


243 


was hot and sticky with his own blood. He 
reached the top of the second stairway which led 
down to the first floor—and what? Even in his 
desperately chaotic state of mind, he knew that 
the odds were against him. Rut anything was 
better than the chair, and it was that—or this. 
He felt his strength swiftly ebbing from his body, 
slipping away from him through that hot, burning 
hole in his abdomen. 

Downstairs, Bates, the butler, had heard the 
double shot and for a moment was incapable of 
movement. It was only with supreme effort that 
he got his frail old legs in motion and propelled 
himself toward the stairs. Halfway up he faced 
Haskins, who held weavingly to the bannister rail. 

“Out—out of my way!” ordered Haskins, but 
his voice was thick, hoarsely unsteady. The re¬ 
volver wabbled with the lurching of his body. 
Before Bates, petrified with terror at the menace 
of the pointing gun, could obey, the wounded man 
at the top of the stairs sagged forward and went 
crashing down, sliding, humping, clawing, and his 
body came to a halt on the first landing at Bates’ 
feet. He h^d just enough strength to lift himself 
weakly to his elbow. 

“That dirty dick—got me—good!” he muttered. 
“I—I hope I croaked—him. Curse the cops! The 
cops and the skirts—^to hell with both of ’em!” 
He coughed chokingly. “Fm dyin’,” he screeched. 
“I’m hleedin’ to death—inside.” 

His distorted mouth was flecked with red. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 

S TUNNED and sick from the paralyzing impact 
of Haskins’ bullet, Sergeant Tish did not realize 
that his own shot had found an even more vital 
mark; he had failed to see the trickle of crimson 
that welled from between the wanted man’s fingers, 
as the latter had pressed his hand hard against 
his body. In a daze the New York detective only 
realized that the desperate fugitive was escaping 
from him a second time, and that his flight must 
be stopped. As his thoughts cleared a little, it oc¬ 
curred to him that Haskins might try to leave in 
the police car out in front of the house, but he 
would have a hard job of that, for the plain-clothes 
man had the key to the ignition switch in his pocket. 

The local constable still lay in a huddled, gro¬ 
tesque heap on the floor, and he had not moved. 
Despite his own haste to pursue Haskins—^his injury 
would not stop that—Tish leaned over Ham Griggs, 
puzzled that there was no evidence of a terrible, 
lethal wound. He had taken it for granted that 
Haskins must have had another weapon in addition 
to the one left beside the body of the murdered Helen 
Gilmore, and that he had shot down Griggs, as the 
latter had burst in upon him in the attempted 
capture. All he could find was a purpling swelling 
at the edge of Griggs’ temple; and then he saw 
the improvised weapon, the strangest that had ever 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 245 

come to his notice—the sock weighted with the 
doorknob. 

“Huh!” said Sergeant Tish, with a grunt that 
was more than half a groan. He saw what had 
happened. “Haskins beaned ’im with that thing, 
handed him a knock-out, and then took his gun 
away from him.” He bent still a little lower and 
perceived that the constable’s breathing was re¬ 
assuringly regular. “Don’t look like he was goin’ 
to croak.” 

As Don Haskins collapsed and went crashing down 
the stairs, Wiggly Price and Doctor Bushnell stood 
gaping at each other, both struggling with inde¬ 
cision as to which direction they would turn as 
their first move to follow this breathless race of 
happenings. What had happened upstairs they did 
not know, only that to their ears had come the 
ominous sound of three pistol shots, and that neither 
Constable Griggs nor Sergeant Tish had come down. 

“What’s happened to the two officers?” cried Doc¬ 
tor Bushnell. “Perhaps-” Before he could finish 

the sentence, Tish appeared at the head of the 
inclosed stairway, his right arm dangling limply, 
a trickle of blood seeping down beneath the edge 
of his coat sleeve, twisting into a fantastic crimson 
design about his wrist and the back of his hand. 

“What’s happened up there?” shouted the physi¬ 
cian. “Heavens, man, you’re wounded I Griggs-” 

Tish had retrieved the automatic and held it in 
his left hand rather awkwardly, but determined to 
use it if he could. 

“The constable is knocked cold,” he said, as he 
came down the steps. “You’d better look after him, 
doctor. Haskins has-” 




246 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Wiggly Price had rushed to the head of the 
other stairs, from where he could see Don Haskins 
sprawled upon the first landing, gasping for breath 
and mopping the foam from his mouth with the back 
of his hand. The revolver had slid several steps 
down and was safely out of the man’s reach. 

“Here he is, sergeant!” shouted the newspaper 
man. “He nicked you, but you got him worse 
than that.” 

Again Doctor Bushnell struggled with indecision. 
Three men wounded! Which of them should have 
first call upon his professional services? Don 
Haskins’ choking wail, coming from down the front 
stairs, decided him. 

“I’m dyin’!” he croaked. “I say I’m dyin’.” And 
with the next breath he muttered a vicious curse 
upon “the cops.” But, before the doctor could move 
out of his tracks, Joan Sheridan had again come 
flying from the east wing of the house and clutched 
his arm. At the moment of her appearance she saw 
Tish. 

“Those shots—what do they mean?” she panted. 
“What—^what has happened now?” 

“We have caught the murderer,” answered Doctor 
Bushnell, gently pushing her away. “The crook 
who killed Kirklan’s wife was in hiding on the 
third floor.” Another groan came from Haskins. 
“There was some shooting; the man’s desperately 
wounded. I am going to see now. Go back to 
your room, Joan; you’ve had enough horror.” 

But the girl crept to the top of the stairs after 
him and stared down with a shudder. 

“I—I can’t understand!” she whispered. “They 
say that man killed her. I—I can’t understand!” 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 247 

she whispered. “They say that man killed her. 
I can’t understand!” 

Had Wiggly Price been privileged to hear those 
whispered words of Joan’s it would have added 
fresh fuel to his smoldering suspicion that she 
knew more about the death of Helen Gilmore than 
she was willing to tell. The newspaper man had 
hurried down the stairs and, elbowing the butler 
out of the way, bent over Haskins. A moment later 
Doctor Bushnell had joined him, Tish close behind. 
The doctor shook his head gravely, as he saw the 
bloodstained saliva about Haskins’ lips. 

“Internal hemorrhage,” he murmured. “I don’t 
think there’s much chance for him.” 

As if to verify this diagnosis, Haskins gave a 
gasping cough, and the crimson foam became a 
trickle. 

“Ain’tcha gonna call a priest?” he murmured. 
“I’m dyin’, I tell you—dyin’.” 

“Keep him alive, doc, until I get a full confes¬ 
sion out of him,” urged Sergeant Tish. “Haskins, 
come through; make a clean breast of- 

“No questions for a moment,” broke in the physi¬ 
cian. “Let him be quiet until I see what can be 
done for him. No matter what he’s done, he’s en¬ 
titled to the best a doctor can give him. It’s barely 
possible that an immediate operation-” 

Don Haskins made a half-sobbing, half-growling 
protest. 

“Nix on the—operation stuff. It wouldn’t do me 
no good—anyhow; I tell you that I’m bleedin’ to 
death—inside of me.” 

Doctor Bushnell jerked his head toward Wiggly. 

“Help me with him,” he ordered. “We’ll have 




248 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


to get him somewhere, so that I can see what 
can be done for him.” And to the butler: “Bates, 
up the stairs quick—get my bag. It’s on the floor 
in the hall—near the other stairs. And, Bates, where 
can we take this man?” 

“There are but two guest rooms, sir; one Mr. 
Sarbella occupied, and the other—the body has been 
placed there.” 

“Then it will have to be Sarbella’s room,” de¬ 
clared the doctor. “Help me up with him, Mr. 
Price. Careful, Haskins; the more exertion the more 
the bleeding and the slimmer your chances.” 

Sergeant Tish’s bullet-punctured shoulder, now 
that the numbness of the thudding impact was pass¬ 
ing, throbbed with an excruciating agony, but he 
clamped his teeth together, having no intention of 
making a demand upon Doctor Bushnell’s profes¬ 
sional services until a statement was had from 
the possibly dying prisoner. He could offer no 
assistance, but he followed back up the stairs, as 
Bushnell and the newspaper reporter supported 
Haskins to the second floor and along the hall to the 
guest room which had been Sarbella’s. 

Joan Sheridan tarried indecisively another mo¬ 
ment or so and then she returned to her own room, 
her mind in no way cleared of the bewilderment. 
She longed for explanations, but knew this was 
no time to ask questions. 

In the guest room Haskins was placed upon 
the bed where, as his first act in an effort to save 
the mans’ life. Doctor Bushnell quickly prepared 
an internal astringent, a drug calculated to check 
the inward bleeding. Then he examined the wound 
with the aid of a probe; Haskins’ slowing pulse | 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 


249 


warned the physician that life was ebbing, and 
that there was no hope. 

“The nearest hospital is fifteen miles away, and 
the trip would be fatal,” he said. “And I have 
never specialized in surgery. I have tried to check 
the internal blood flow, but there is nothing else I 
can do. All that I can suggest is to call Doctor 
Hollis, who is a surgeon. If the man is still alive 
when Hollis gets here-” 

“It—it ain’t no use,” gasped Don Haskins. “I’m 
gonna croak, and I know I’m gonna croak.” 

“Yes, Haskins, it looks that way,” nodded Doctor 
Bushnell; “if you’ve got any statement to make 
you’d better make it now. Anyhow I’ll telephone 
Doctor Hollis and then look after Ham Griggs. Un¬ 
conscious, didn’t you say. Sergeant Tish? Lord, 
the house has suddenly become a hospital! What 
about your own injury?” 

Tish shook his head. “I can wait—until Haskins 
has talked,” he said. “You’d better look after the 
constable first, anyhow. It may be worse than it 
seemed to me.” 

Don Haskins was breathing heavily, his eyes 
closed, his hands clenched. As the doctor left the 
room, Tish leaned forward, but became dizzily faint 
and had to seek the support of a chair. 

“You might as well talk, Haskins,” he said. “What 
made you shoot Gilmore’s wife?” 

The prisoner’s lips twisted. “You’re gonna give 
me the rap for that?’ he muttered weakly. “Tryin’ 
to hang two croaks onto me—and I never did either 
one of ’em.” His eyes opened slowly. “Dago Mike— 
did he tell the cops that I did for the watchman— 
that loft job in the Bronx?” 



250 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Tish nodded. “Yes, that’s what he told the in¬ 
spector,” he answered. 

“It’s a lie,” said Haskins, but without any great 
emotion of indignation; perhaps, being so sure that 
he was dying, he did not care, or it might have 
heen that he did not have the strength left for 
vehemence. Still, again, it was possible that it 
sounded so flat and colorless, this denial, because 
it lacked the ring of truth. “Dago Mike done it. 
I knowed he’d squeal; he always was a dirty rat. 
I was a fool to go into a job with that—^that scum. 
Yeah, Dago Mike was the one that did the watch¬ 
man.” 

Tish winced with a fresh throb of pain from 
his shoulder. “Why did you shoot Gilmore’s wife?” 
he repeated. 

Haskins turned his head, let his mouth twist into 
a harsh smile, and, lifting his hand slowly, wiped 
his lips with the back of his hand. There was 
again a little blood. 

“Gilmore’s wife?” he retorted in a hoarse whis¬ 
per. “She was—^my wife!” 

Wiggly Price started forward with an exclama¬ 
tion of amazement, and his ears danced with ex¬ 
citement. 

“W-what?” he gasped. “Y-your wife? You mean 
that? Great heavens, Tish, I believe he’s telling the 
truth!” 

The New York detective gestured for silence with 
his uninjured arm. 

“Shut up!” he commanded tersely. 

“Yeah, that’s—^that’s what she was—^my wife,” 
went on Don Haskins in a whisper, which, as he 
continued to talk, was at times hardly audible. 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 


251 


“She done bigamy when she married—Gilmore. She 
—she never got no divorce—from me. 

“Fm gonna talk, see. What Fm tellin’ you is 
strictly on the level. I know Fm goin’—fast; there 
ain’t no use for me to—cover up. Curse the skirts! 

If it wasn’t—for her-” His voice trailed off in 

a choking excitement, his eyes closed momentarily, 
and the two eagerly listening men were afraid that 
it was all over with him, but Haskins looked at 
them again. 

“I—I guess she thought she’d shook me—after I 
busted up a mash she had on a guy named Sarbella; 
but I kept cases on her—^got a line on her when 
I come back from Chi—parole from a long stretch 
at Joliet. 

“Then I gets into that Bronx job jam, and I 
needs dough—^bad. And quick. So I send for— 

for her, and she-” He had to stop again to wipe 

his mouth free of that trickle of blood which oozed 
upward from his punctured stomach. 

“And she came to Eighth Avenue Annie’s,” sup¬ 
plied Tish. “She gave you some money. We know 
that much; go on, Haskins.” 

“She was cornin’ back—to-day—with a thousand 
iron men,” proceeded the prisoner’s weakening whis¬ 
per. “Then Annie tipped off the cops. Curse the 
old hag! I dunno why Annie-” 

“She did not,” grunted Sergeant Tish; I saw her 
buying some duds and trailed her. Annie didn’t 
double cross you.” 

“When I lays you out—and beats it,” went on 
Haskins, “I—I guess you know part of it, how I 
swipes a taxi an’ blows out here?” Tish nodded. 
“I sneaks around the house an’ spots—^Helen’s win- 





252 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


dow, does a porch-climber stunt to the roof, gets 
into her room, an’-” 

“And shot her—with my gun,” prompted the de¬ 
tective. But, if Haskins was the murderer, he 
did not fall into this trap of suggestion. 

“I’m givin’ it to you—straight,” his whisper went 
on. “I didn’t croak her; I—I grabbed her, and she 
—got the gat—outta my pocket, but I didn’t know 
that—then. We hears a door slam, an’ we thinks 
it’s Gilmore—in the—next room. She sneaks me 
into the hall and tells me to hide—third floor. Says 
she’ll get me some dough and get me—away.” 

The man’s words were so faint and came from 
his lips in such a jerky tumble that both Tish and 
Wiggly Price had to lean close in order to hear the 
rest of his story. 

“When I gets up there—^third floor, I knows it 
was her—^took—^the gun. I—I guess she was afraid 
I was gonna—use it—on her. She knowed she’d 
done me dirt. Curse her—she made a bum—outta 
me. 

“I—I wants that gun, see! After a while I sneaks 
back down to—second floor—to make her—gimme 
the gat. As I gets to—to the foot of the stairs I 
hears a scream. It comes from—from her room. 
Then—then there’s—a shot.” 

Both Tish and Wiggly looked skeptical at this, 
but neither of them spoke; both sensed that Don 
Haskins had something to add. They were right; 
he had. After another moment of silence, Haskins’ 
lips moved again. 

“The—^the door—^was open; the—^the light was 
burnin’—inside, an’ I seen—the one who did the 
job—cornin’ out—of the room.” 



HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 


253 


Sergeant Tish snorted derisively. 

“Haskins,” he flung out, “you’re lying! Are you 
going to face your Maker with that lie on your 
conscience? That stuff’s the bunk. You killed her, 
and you might as well come through.” 

“Wait a minute, sergeant,” whispered Wiggly; 
“ask him whom he saw coming out of the room. 
There’s a chance that he may be telling us the 
truth!” 

Tish hesitated a moment, stirred in his chair, 
winced with the pain of the movement, and then 
accepted the suggestion. 

“There’s just one way that you can prove that you 
are giving us straight goods, Haskins,” he said, 
“and that’s to tell us who came out of the room.” 

Don Haskins closed his eyes again, and a queer, 
crooked, mirthless grimace caught up the corners 
of his mouth, a grimace all the more horrible be¬ 
cause a fresh trickle of crimson seeped across his 
lips and trickled down his unshaven chin. Whether 
he had begun his story with the intention of ending 
it at this most unsatisfactory point, or whether the 
abrupt termination was a matter of sudden decision, 
can never be known. 

“She—she was—^no good,” he told them in an 
almost inaudible whisper. “She—she made a bum 
outta me when—when she gimme the go-by. She 
made that Sarbella kid do a Dutch, and she handed 
Gilmore—a mean wallop. She got—what was 
cornin’ to her. If I wasn’t gonna croak—^I’d have 
to talk to save—^my own self; but I ain’t gonna 
make no trouble—for nobody—on account—killin’ 
her. That’s all you get—from me.” 


254 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

“He’s lying!” gritted Tish. “Sure he’s lying. He 
killed her.” 

But Wiggly Price was not so sure. If Haskins, 
as it seemed, knew he was dying, why should he? 
lie? There was one possibility why he should; 
it might have occurred to him that he still had a 
chance to cheat death, and he had cunningly con¬ 
cocted this yarn out of the whole cloth. 

Thoughts and theories leaped through Wiggly’s 
mind. If Haskins’ story improbable as it sounded, 
were true, the Greenacres mystery had been returned 
to its first status, and suspicion returned even more 
strongly to Victor Sarbella. Guilt lay between the 
artist and Joan Sheridan. Again the newspaper 
man thought of the girl’s agitation when told that 
suspicion had turned away from Sarbella, her relief 
and yet bewilderment when she had heard that 
circumstances pointed to Haskins, the crook; and 
he thought, too, of the black hairpin. 

“You’re lying, Haskins,” Tish said again; “but 
what gets me is that you didn’t make a break for 
it after the shooting.” 

The wounded man stirred slightly. “I—I tried— 
to make—^my get-away,” he whispered, “but there 
was two guys cornin’ up the front stairs, an’ I 
hadda dodge back—to—the attic.” 

“Haskins,” burst out Wiggly, “the person you 
saw coming out of that room—^was it a man or a 
woman?” 

But Don Haskins shook his head feebly. He 
made no other response. A little later, while Tish 
still plied insistent and exasperated questions, the 
man’s body twitched and relaxed; then a gush of 
crimson poured from his mouth. 


HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET 


255 


“He’s dying!” cried Wiggly and made a leap to¬ 
ward the door to siunmon Doctor BushnelL 
It was too late. Haskins’ eyes had opened and 
were fixed glassily upon the ceiling. He was dying 
with his last, stubborn silence unbroken; and the 
Gilmore tragedy was yet to be solved. 


CHAPTER XXV 

THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 

T he doctor had found Constable Griggs’ injury 
worse than he had anticipated, for Haskins 
had struck a vicious blow with the doorknob wick¬ 
edly concealed within the toe of his sock; there 
was a bad skull fracture that threatened fatal re¬ 
sults. With Bates to help him, Doctor Bushnell 
had placed Ham Griggs upon the discarded couch 
and had just completed a painstaking examination, 
when Wiggly Price came pounding up the third floor 
stairs to the storeroom. 

“Quick, doc!” panted the newspaper man. “Hask¬ 
ins is dying; he’s got another hemorrhage—a worse 
one. I’m afraid he’s a goner.” 

The doctor motioned to the butler. 

“You stay here with the constable. Bates,” he or¬ 
dered. “I’ll be back in a moment; we’ve got to 
get this man to the hospital. He’s dangerously 
hurt. Price; a bad skull fracture.” As he spoke, 
he was following the reporter back down the 
stairs. “I’m not surprised about Haskins. But 
there was nothing more than I could do for him, 
and Griggs needed me, too.” 

“The other doctor, the surgeon, you telephoned 
for-” 

“Is operating at a hospital in New York this 
morning; I was unable to reach him. But, for that 
matter, I do not believe any human agency could 
have saved Haskins. Perhaps, after all, it’s better 



THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 257 


this way; circumstances are doing what the State 
would doubtless have done^—exacted his life in 
payment.” 

They had reached the door of the guest room. 
Sergeant Tish still sat in his chair beside the bed; 
he turned slowly, painfully. 

“You’re too late,” he said. 

Doctor Bushnell stepped forward, was silent for 
moment; then he inclined his head. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “Fm too late, but it doesn’t 
matter; even an operation was a forlorn hope. I 
could not have kept him alive; nothing could have 
done that, I think.” He stared down at the dead 
man’s contorted features. “An evil face,” he mur¬ 
mured. “An evil end for an evil life. Did he make 
a confession, sergeant?” 

“No, confound his stubbornness!” growled Ser¬ 
geant Tish. “He gave us a wild kind of yarn that 
explained his connection with the Gilmore woman, 
his hold on her, and how he got into the house, 
but denied that he did the shooting. Of course 
he was lying.” 

Doctor Bushnell nodded. “He killed her—cer¬ 
tainly,” he agreed. “The way he knocked out Griggs 
and shot you is proof that he was a cold-blooded 
killer. What was the hold that he had over the 
dead woman?” 

“She was Haskins’ wife—his legal wife.” 

The physician gasped and, thinking of the beau¬ 
tiful Helen Gilmore, stared down at the hideous 
face of the dead criminal, with a look of amaze¬ 
ment that bordered upon incredulity. 

“What—the wife of that man? It seems absurd, 
absolutely preposterous! I find it next to impos- 


258 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

sible to believe it. Then, when she married Kirklan, 
she-” 

“Committed bigamy,” finished Sergeant Tish with 
a jerk of his head that sent another stab of pain 
through his wounded shoulder. “That’s it, doctor; 
and that is what gave him a hold on her—^why he 
was able to have her visit him at Eighth Avenue 
Annie’s day before yesterday, give him money and 
agree to give him still more; that was why he 
fled to her for protection and was hiding when I 
stumbled onto him. I guess that part of it is true, 
all right. 

“Perhaps not so amazing as it would seem. 
Haskins was not always the bum he is now. They 
used to call him Nifty Don in his palmy days; he’s 
hit the skids since then. He blames her for slipping; 
she threw him over, as I got it. I wish you’d take 
a look at this shoulder of mine, doc; the wound 
is throbbing like a sixty-horse-power engine.” 

Doctor Bushnell murmured a hasty apology for 
neglecting him so long. 

“I’ll have a look at that right now. Sergeant 
Tish. Three emergency cases all at one time is a 
big order for a doctor. Price, will you get my 
kit from the third floor? I’m hoping there’s enough 
gauze and bandages to do.” 

“The constable come around all right?” asked 
Tish, as the newspaper man hurried from the room. 

“A bad skull fracture, sergeant, where Haskins 
struck him a terrific blow on the side of the head. 
I’m taking him to the hospital just as quickly as 
I’ve got you patched up a bit. You, too, if there is 
need.” 

“Don’t think it’ll be necessary, doc. Lord, what a 



THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 259 

wild morning it’s been!” He gritted his teeth, as 
the physician slipped down the coat sleeve and be¬ 
gan ripping away the shirt. “What’s happened to 
Gilmore? Strange that he didn’t show up with all 
the racket.” 

“Probably asleep under the influence of the opiate 
that I gave him to relax his strain,” answered Doctor 
Bushnell. “He’s one of those high-strung, emo¬ 
tional fellows, and I couldn’t risk too much nervous 
tension with him. He was on the verge of a 
collapse. Poor devil! He’s a good sort; doesn’t de¬ 
serve what that woman has done to him.” 

Wiggly returned with the doctor’s kit, and Bush¬ 
nell began to work swiftly; the wound in the de¬ 
tective’s shoulder had bled but little. The bullet, he 
found, had struck the collar bone at a deflecting 
angle, plowing for a brief distance along the top 
of the clavicle, where it was imbedded just beneath 
the skin. 

“You’re a lucky man. Sergeant Tish,” grunted 
the doctor. “If that had been a little lower there 
would have been the very devil to pay. The worst 
danger is that the bone has been cracked, and I 
do not think it has been. This treatment, of course, 
is only temporary; “I’ll look after you again later. 

It was the work of but a few minutes to make 
a shallow incision which removed the bullet, cauter¬ 
ize the wound, and apply dressings. ^ 

“I shall take Griggs to the hospital in my car,” 
said Bushnell, as he finished. “The butler can go 
along with me. We’ll be back within an hour or 
so—^just as soon as I can manage it. I suppose 
Sarbella will have to stay in jail until Griggs re¬ 
covers consciousness and releases him.” 


260 


THE PORCE^.AIN MASK 


Wiggly broke a considerable silence. 

“It’s my notion,” he said, “that Sarbella had better 
stay right where he is until—^well, until the case 
has been cleared up completely.” 

The doctor stared in surprise. “What do you 
mean by that?” he exclaimed. “Not that there’s 
any doubt but Haskins killed the woman?” 

“Not the slightest doubt that Haskins did it,” 
Tish declared in a positive tone. “I don’t take any 
stock in his story—^that is, the part of it in which 
he denied doing the shooting. I suppose the rest 
of it is straight enough.” 

Doctor Bushnell looked reprovingly at the news¬ 
paper man. “I must say,” he said severely, “that 
you are a most perverse young man. When the 
weight of all the evidence was strictly against 
Sarbella, you were trying to prove his innocence. 
Yet now, when the discovery and capture of this 
desperate criminal—the legal husband of the dead 
woman—^makes it practically certain that Haskins 
was the murderer, you suddenly change front 
and-” 

“Perhaps it’s because I’ve got more faith in the 
truth of Haskins’ story than Sergeant Tish has,” 
broke in Wiggly Price. “In my mind the case 
against Sarbella is stronger than ever—circumstan¬ 
tially. But, with what we’ve got, I don’t think for 
a minute that a jury would ever convict him. 
Haskins’ account of things does explain how Sar- 
hella, or”—he hesitated cautiously—“or some other 
person might have got possession of the gun.” 

“Or some other person!” exclaimed the doctor im¬ 
patiently. “Tut, Price, don’t be such an utter ass. 


THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 261 

I’ve something more important to do than listen to 
a new crop of empty theories. What other person, 
pray, have you in mind?” 

Wiggly felt that any mention of Joan Sheridan 
would arouse the physician’s antagonism; moreover 
it would serve no purpose. So he chose the wise 
course of answering the question only with a shrug 
of the shoulders. 

“The constable is a heavy man, and the butler 
old and rather feeble,” he said, abruptly switching 
the subject; “perhaps I’d better help you get him 
downstairs and into your car.” 

“Yes; please,” grunted Doctor Bushnell. 

Tish trailed along behind the two and waited on 
the second floor, while the physician and Wiggly 
went to the storeroom to carry down the uncon¬ 
scious Ham Griggs. 

“He hasn’t moved a muscle since you left. Doctor 
Bushnell,” reported the butler. “Except that I can 
see him breathing I’d think he was dead.” 

The doctor issued brief, terse instructions, and he 
and Wiggly formed a human packsaddle by grasping 
each other’s wrists. In this way, their heavy burden 
between them, they made their way down from the 
third floor, while Bates hurried off to get a supply 
of pillows for padding the tonneau of the doctor’s 
car. 

“I was going to suggest that you come along,” 
Bushnell suggested; but Wiggly shook his head. 

“No, I’d like to stay here,” he answered. “Bates 
will do as well as I for your trip.” 

“Oh, I see,” the physician said shortly, “you want 
to gather some new theories about the tragedy. 


262 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


You’re making a fool of yourself, Price; the case, 
thank Heaven, is solved.” 

“Hope so, doctor, hut that remains to be seen.” 

“Certainly it’s solved!” exclaimed Bushnell with 
asperity. “As deputy coroner I shall convene a 
jury and hold an inquest as quickly as possible— 
this afternoon. I’ll bring the district attorney back 
with me when I return from the hospital. The 
verdict will be a mere matter of formality.” 

“Yes,” agreed Wiggly, “a mere matter of formal¬ 
ity, unless we turn up something new.” 

The butler came hurrying out of the house with 
the pillows; the doctor took them from him and 
arranged them supportingly behind the unconscious 
constable’s shoulders. 

“Get your hat. Bates,” he instructed; “you’ll have 
to go along.” 

Three or four minutes later the physician’s ma¬ 
chine, Bushnell at the wheel and Bates in the rear 
seat with the insensible Griggs, rolled down the 
white-graveled driveway, and Wiggly returned to the 
house, wondering a little what had happened to Tip 
Gregory, reporter for the rival paper. The Tran¬ 
script Probably Tip, rebuffed at Greenacres, had 
gone to the village in search of information. 

Sergeant Tish had come down from the second 
floor and had established himself in one of the 
library’s roomy chairs, making himself as com¬ 
fortable as his twinging shoulder would permit. 
His roundish face was still gray with the throbbing 
pain, but he endured it with fortitude. 

“Well, young man,” he grunted, “you’ve got a 
darn good story, and you ought to be satisfied. 


THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 263 


Seems to me that it’s good enough to suit your 
paper without your trying to add anything im¬ 
aginative.” 

“Meaning,” replied Wiggly, “that you’d have me 
quit thinking. Nope, I stick to my hunch that 
Haskins’ story was what he said it was—strictly on 
the level.” 

“Bunk!” snorted Tish. 

“Let’s talk it over, sergeant,” Wiggly urged ear¬ 
nestly as, hands rammed deep into his pockets, he 
strode up and down the room, his ears twitching 
slightly. “Does it seem reasonable to you that 
Haskins would have left the automatic behind him 
after the shooting?” 

“Humph!” the New York detective grunted non¬ 
committally. 

“That gun,” went on the newspaper man, “was 
his one friend, the only hope that he had if he 
were cornered. Besides, leaving the gun behind 
served no purpose—^no purpose whatever. In fact, 
if he had the brains to reason it out, he would 
have known that there was a chance—a serious 
chance—of the automatic being identified as your 
gun. It’s the common thing to trace a gun by its 
serial number.” 

“He might have dropped the gun accidentally and 
didn’t have a chance to get his hands on it again.” 

“Oh, I say, sergeant, that’s too thin 1” exclaimed 
Wiggly. “It’s taking too much for granted to pre¬ 
sume that the gun accidentally fell in a position 
directly beneath the murdered woman’s hand. No, 
that was done with the deliberate intention of hav¬ 
ing her death appear suicide.” 


264 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“It’s a good point, and it’s reasonable,” admitted 
Tish, “but it doesn’t prove anything. I got to admit 
it does seem a little queer that Haskins would have 
left the gun behind.” 

“And it hooks up with Haskins’ story about miss¬ 
ing the gun, realizing that the Gilmore woman had 
lifted it out of his pocket, and his determination 
to risk a trip downstairs again in an effort to get 
it back.” 

“Humph!” Tish said again. 

“When you identified the gun as yours—^the one 
that Haskins took away from you when he knocked 
you out at Eighth Avenue Annie’s yesterday—it did 
seem impossible that Sarbella, or any one else, 
could have done the shooting. But let us suppose 
that Haskins’ dying statement was true. The Gil¬ 
more woman had the gun; maybe she took it be¬ 
cause she was afraid of her legal husband.” 

“Whatcha mean—‘or any one else?”’ growled 
Tish. “You keep hinting at something you haven’t 

let me in on. If it wasn’t Haskins or Sarbella- 

Aw, you talk like a fool!” 

Wiggly hesitated for a moment. “Tish,” he said 
slowly, “I don’t know that I’m exactly holding any 
aces, but I’m going to lay all my cards on the table 
and let you have a look at ’em. We know why 
Sarbella might have killed the woman.” 

“Motive ain’t strong enough,” broke in the de¬ 
tective with a shake of the head. “His kid brother 
lost his head over her and killed himself; that’s all.” 

“Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but when we 
think of Sarbella’s motive we’ve got to think of a 
race that is credited with a passion for personal 
vengeance. The Latins are hot-blooded, and their 


THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 265 

blood does not cool quickly like ours. They nurse a 
grudge for years. 

“Let us suppose that Sarbella went to the Gil¬ 
more woman’s room, not with the intention of killing 
her, but to tell her that, unless she made a full 
confession to her husband, he would tell Gilmore, 
himself. The gun was there—^the gun that she 
had taken away from Haskins—and the man’s hatred 
for this bronze-haired vampire who caused the 
suicide of her brother and the ultimate death of 
their mother, mastered him.” 

“Suppose anything you darn please,” grunted 
Tish. “It’s easy enough to cook up stuff, but mak¬ 
ing it hold water is something else. Yeah, I’ll say 
it is.” 

“But there’s something else,” persisted Wiggly. 
“You’ve missed the hidden undercurrent that I’ve 
sensed. I tell you, Tish, there’s something beneath 
the surface of things in this house.” 

“Meaning just what?” the detective asked skep¬ 
tically. 

“Did you notice Gilmore’s stepsister—Joan Sheri¬ 
dan her name is—^when she came out into the hall 
after the cook fainted?” 

Tish eyed the newspaper man half curiously, half 
disgustedly. 

“I saw her,” he answered. 

“Yes, you saw her, but did you see the expres- 
sions of her face? Did you notice how excited 
she became-” 

“Say, I guess any woman would be excited, after 
what had happened, to hear a woman screaming 
like that cook did, and her face all bloody on top 
of it.” 



266 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“When the doctor told her that Sarbella had been 
removed from suspicion, and that some one else had 
done the shooting,” Wiggly went on, “well, I saw 
it, Tish; and I saw, too, what a look of relief 
came into her face when Bushnell told her that 
it was Haskins, the crook. The human emotions 
seldom lie, Tish, and, take it from me, that Sheridan 
girl knows a lot more about this thing than she is 
willing to tell.” 

“Rave on!” growled Sergeant Tish. “Fd given 
you credit for having a balance wheel, but that’s 
nut stuff you’re pulling now.” 

“Wait a minute,” Wiggly pressed on, not dis¬ 
couraged by the other’s derision. “Maybe you re¬ 
member that Haskins refused to answer me when 
I asked him if it was a man or a woman he saw 
coming out of the Gilmore woman’s room after he 
heard the shot.” 

“I can answer it, even if Haskins didn’t; it was 
a man come out of the room, and it was Haskins 
himself. Whatcha trying to do now—^liang it onto 
the Sheridan girl? Think it would make a better 
story for you, huh? Aw, forget it! Why would 
she have done it?” The question came in a trium¬ 
phant tone. 

“Oh, I’ve got you an answer for that, Tish,” 
Wiggly replied. “So you demand a motive; all 
right. I’ll furnish that, too. The strongest and 
most unreasoning of motives, the most deadly— 
jealousy!” 

“Huh?” 

“Joan Sheridan is in love with her stepbrother. I 
got that from the constable’s daughter this morning.” 


THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 267 

“A woman’s gossip!” snorted Tish. “I wouldn’t 
go two cents on no kind of talk like that.” 

“And verified it by the butler,” Wiggly added 
doggedly. “The constable’s daughter is a great little 
gabber, and I wouldn’t take her unsupported word; 
so I felt out Bates, and he admitted that the house¬ 
hold had rather hoped for a match between Gilmore 
and Miss Sheridan. Yes, she’s in love with her 
stepbrother; used to help him with his work and 
that sort of thing. The butler told me that it was a 
great shock to Miss Sheridan when she returned 
home from Europe and found that he had married 
during her absence. 

“There’s another little point; it might not seem 
so much, but I can imagine how it must have 
added to the blow. Miss Sheridan also returned 
home to find this strange woman—Gilmore’s bride— 
had taken possession of her own room, a room that 
she had occupied for years and had formed a deep 
attachment for. I gather that a very strained situa¬ 
tion resulted; even the servants took a dislike to 
the new Mrs. Gilmore. 

“Man, I tell you there’s something under the 
surface; I tell you that we’ve only scratched the 
surface, so to speak, of the Gilmore mystery. If 
Miss Sheridan would talk, we might learn some¬ 
thing interesting.” He tossed up his hands in a 
helpless gesture. “It would be silly to try and 
quiz her until we’ve got something to face her 
with; that would only spoil whatever chances we 
may have of getting to the bottom of it. 

Sergeant Tish frowned and pulfed out his plump 
cheeks; he was thinking things over now; then he 
shook his head. 


268 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Don’t take much stock in it,” he declared. 

“Jealousy is a primitive passion,” argued Wiggly. 
“Fd consider it a stronger motive than revenge. 
Between Sarbella and the girl-” 

“No,” Tish corrected himself, “I don’t take any 
stock in it at all. Haskins did the murder; Haskins 
is dead, and the case is closed. Don’t bother me 
with any more of this stuff.” 

“There’s one more thing that I haven’t told you,” 
said the newspaper man. “You rememher the color 
of the murdered woman’s hair?” 

“Sort of a dull gold, isn’t it?” grunted Tish, in¬ 
terested in spite of himself. “What’s the color of her 
hair got to do with it?” 

“Bronze is the right color, Tish; naturally she 
uses bronze hairpins, as I verified by a look at 
her dressing table. And yet on the floor beside the 
chaise longue I found a black hairpin, and Miss 
Sheridan’s hair is dark.” 

Sergeant Tish puffed out his cheeks, looking up 
slowly. For a full minute he debated this informa¬ 
tion before he stirred. 

“Women are always dropping hairpins outta their 
heads; might have been a servant, or Miss Sheridan, 
for that matter, paying a perfectly innocent visit to 
the room.” Yet the detective’s tone was deliberate, 
thoughtful. 

“Remember the Hitchcock murder—solved by a 
black mourning pin?” 

Moving cautiously in an effort to keep any pain¬ 
ful strain from his shoulder muscles, Tish stood 
to his feet. 

“Mind you,” he warned, “I don’t say that I think 



THE SKEPTICISM OF SERGEANT TISH 269 


you’re within a hundred miles of being right, but 
it’ll do no harm to go upstairs and have another 
look around.” 

In the light of Tish’s previously derisive skep¬ 
ticism, Wiggly felt that he had achieved something 
of a victory. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


BITS OF TALLOW 

P RESENTLY Tish and Wiggly Price were once 
more within the room where Helen Gilmore had 
met death, again seeking from the mute furnishings 
some vital clew that previous examinations might 
have overlooked. The newspaper man was all eager¬ 
ness, but the interest of the detective had already 
cooled. There was the window with Haskins’ finger 
prints; he had the sort of mind that readily ac¬ 
cepts the obvious, and his police experience had 
taught him that, nine chances to ten, the obvious 
is the true. 

It was a little hard to think of this cheerful bed¬ 
chamber as a place of dark deeds. The north 
windows looked out upon the wide and shimmering 
bosom of the Hudson; a sailboat clipped daintily 
over the water, and in its wake the sunlight made 
the ripples scintillate like diamonds. Across the 
Tappan Zee the stern ruggedness of the New Jersey 
Palisades was softened with a verdant touch and 
splash of summer greenness. 

“The answer to it all is here,” said Wiggly. 
“There must be something more for us than just a 
woman’s hairpin.” 

“Sure,” grunted Tish; “my gun and Haskins’ 
finger prints on the glass.” He had returned even 
more positively to the conviction that he had been 
right in the first place. 

“Ah, but what we’re after now, Tish, is a clew 


BITS OF TALLOW 


271 


that will outweigh the finger prints and the gun. 
There must be something more than that; there’s 
got to be.” 

“That stuff about there always being a clew is 
the bunk,” said Tish. “I’ve seen dozens of cases 
where there wasn’t a thing for us cops to go on. 
But this is different. All the evidence points straight 
at Haskins. What else have you got? A hairpin 
and an imagination!” 

Wiggly was not discouraged; beginning at the 
side of the room, he began to walk slowly, bent 
nearly double, his eyes searching, searching, while 
Tish watched him in a half-amused, half-contemptu- 
ous silence. Again the reporter came upon the shat¬ 
tered pieces of the broken vase which lay on the 
rug near the little mahogany table, but he had 
already rejected these fragments as things of no 
importance; proof, if anything, that some one, prob¬ 
ably the murderer, had struck against the table, 
crashing the vase to the floor. Perhaps it was 
to his discredit as an investigator that it did not 
occur to him as strange that the vase should have 
been broken into as many pieces. 

Near the table, however, he did find something 
that he had overlooked until now; it was a bit of 
whitish substance which, as he picked it up from 
where it had been crushed flat into the rug, was 
moderately soft between his fingers. He frowned 
over it, puzzled. 

“Tallow!” he exclaimed. “The sort of tallow they 
make candles of.” 

“Huh!” grunted Tish. 

“People seldom use tallow candles these days, 
except for those decorative candlesticks.” His gaze 


272 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


roved swiftly about the room. “No candlestick in 
this room, either. This piece is too chunky to he 
candle drip; besides, why should any one have been 
walking around with a lighted candle last night? 
If the lights had been out of commission, some one 
would surely have mentioned it. Wouldn’t you con¬ 
sider this just a little queer, Tish?” 

“If you’re asking me to speak my mind. I’d be 
more apt to say that you’re a little queer, always 
jumping at little things that don’t amount to any¬ 
thing. What if it is a piece of tallow? That don’t 
prove anything—any more than a hairpin does.” 

Speculatively Wiggly turned the find over in his 
hand; it was grained with black specks. He looked 
to the floor again and, some three or four feet 
away, saw another bit of it. 

“No children in the house,” he mused. “Chil¬ 
dren might explain it; when I was a kid I used to 
take a candle and mold it into odd sorts of shapes 
—a juvenile attempt at sculpture—human heads, 
animals, and the like. Yes, Tish, this is queer— 
darned queer!” Completely baffled in his effort to 
account for the presence of the tallow, he put it 
into his pocket along with the black hairpin. 

“Something else to think about, anyhow,” he 
told himself and continued his literally inch-by-inch 
survey of the room. It was at the far end of the 
chamber that, almost completely hidden in the thick 
nap of the rug, he found another piece of the broken 
vase, this one little more than a sliver, and still 
another bit of the tallow. 

“Tish!” he fairly shouted. “Come here! Here’s 
a little mystery all in itself.” 

“What now?” 


BITS OF TALLOW 


273 


Wiggly exhibited the fragment of porcelain and 
pointed dramatically to the spot on the rug where 
he had discovered it. 

“We’ve been presuming all along, Tish,” he said 
almost breathlessly, “that the vase was broken when 
some one bumped into the table. It’s a dozen feet 
from the table to this spot; it isn’t reasonable to 
think that one of the pieces could have shattered 
for such a distance. As a matter of fact, Tish, 
there’s something that I’ve been a blockhead not to 
think of before. This rug is pretty thick; it’s only 
three feet from the top of the table to the floor, 
and yet that vase is broken into a hundred and 
one pieces. And here’s a bit of it twelve feet away!” 

“Humph!” grunted Tish. 

“What do you make of it anyhow?” 

“Maybe the Gilmore woman threw it at Haskins,” 
suggested the detective, puffing out his cheeks and 
frowning; “maybe she saw what was coming, picked 
up the vase, and flung it at his head—something 
like that, huh?” 

“Y-yes,” Wiggly admitted hesitatingly; “that might 
explain it being broken into so many pieces, but that 
doesn’t explain the tallow. I’ve got a feeling that 
those are the two things that are going to add up 
four.” 

“Oh, forget the tallow!” Tish muttered peevishly. 
“What’s a little tallow got to do with a murder— 
or a smashed vase, for that matter? You better 
stick to digging up news and let this Sherlock 
business alone.” 

Wiggily shook his head stubbornly. 

“It’s a puzzle, Tish, but I’m going to stick until 
these peculiar little things you scoff at are ex- 


274 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


plained.” He again took up his search, hut further 
results were nil. Tish was growing impatient. 

“Fm going back downstairs,” he announced. 

“Wonder where this door leads to?” murmured 
the reporter, as he reached for the knob. It did not 
yield to his touch, but the key was in the lock; a 
moment later he was looking within Kirklan Gil¬ 
more’s sleeping chamber. 

“Ah!” he mused. “She had the door locked 
against her husband. Wonder if that means there 
was discord in the new love nest?” 

Sergeant Tish snorted derisively. “Next,” he said 
with withering sarcasm, “you’ll he trying to hang 
it onto the husband—and him downstairs when the 
shot was fired.” 

“Oh, not at all,” Wiggly answered without resent¬ 
ment; “that was just an aside.” He entered the 
room, gave it a brief survey, and then, satisfied 
that it had nothing to offer him, returned, closing 
the door and relocking it behind him. “Nothing in 
there that could interest us, Tish. The net result 
so far seems to be one black hairpin and a few 
pieces of tallow candle—perhaps a broken vase. I’m 
not so sure but that you’ve given a pretty logical 
explanation of the vase.” He sighed in discourage¬ 
ment. “Not much to go on, eh? Wish I could 
figure out the tallow thing.” 

“Forget it,” advised Tish. 

“If we could only get Miss Sheridan to talk. 
Wish I had the authority to put her through a 
sprout of questions!” 

Tish tenderly massaged the wrist of his injured 
arm; the bandages interfered with his circulation. 

“Well, you haven’t got the authority; neither have 


BITS OF TALLOW 


275 


I. And I wouldn’t waste my time quizzing her, if 
I had. So far as I’m concerned, the case is solved. 
Haskins did the killing. I’ve messed around here 
and let you play at the detective business long 
enough; me for one of those comfy chairs down in 
the library. Guess I’ll stick around for the inquest. 
Coming down?” 

Wiggly hesitated for a moment and then nodded. 
“Yes, I suppose I might as well,” he agreed; “I 
think I’ve exhausted the possibilities here.” 

The two men went downstairs and into the 
library, Tish to take what comfort he could in one 
of the easy-chairs, and the newspaper man to 
speculate with discouraging futility on the puzzle 
of the candle tallow. He felt as if he had told the 
New York detective sergeant that the next move was 
to question Joan Sheridan. While he had no au¬ 
thority in the matter, he was several times on the 
verge of taking this course into his own hands. 

Doctor Bushnell, he felt very sure, would resent 
any hint that the girl had a criminal knowledge of 
the murder; the physician would be prejudiced in 
her favor and wave aside the suggestion indignantly. 
It would be this natural inclination to consider Has¬ 
kins guilty and brush aside any other theory. A 
cross-examination of Miss Sheridan, in the doctor’s 
hands, was liable to be a perfunctory and negligible 
proceeding. 

“Well, young un, got it figured out yet?” grunted 
Tish, breaking a considerable silence. 

“Not yet,” admitted Wiggly, “but I haven’t given 
it up. I’m still struggling with it.” 

Again silence. 

“Where’s Gilmore?” asked Tish presently. “I 


276 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


haven’t had eyes on the man since I’ve been here. 
Wasn’t in his room when you opened that door, 
huh ?” 

“The doctor put him to bed somewhere here on 
the ground floor—gave him a shot of dope, I believe, 
to quiet him. I saw him last night; he was pretty 
well cut up over it, naturally. He’ll get another 
jolt between the eyes when he’s told that the 
woman wasn’t legally married to him. It’s pretty 
tough on a chap, losing illusions of the woman 
you’re in love with.” 

“Uh-huh,” grunted Tish. “A pretty woman sure 
can stir up a lot of hell for a man—when she’s 
the wrong sort.” 

Wiggly turned in his chair, as there came to 
his ears the sound of a step on the stairs outside 
the archway dividing the library from the reception 
hall, the tap of a woman’s high-heeled shoes. 

“Perhaps-” he murmured and leaped to his 

feet; he was thinking it might be Joan Sheridan, 
and that he could manufacture some excuse to get 
her in conversation. His hopeful guess was right; 
it was Joan. She came slowly down the stairs, her 
face white and drawn. As the newspaper man, 
although she had no knowledge of his profession, 
appeared before her, she paused. 

“I am looking for Doctor Bushnell,” she mur¬ 
mured; “I am anxious to know-” Her voice 

trailed off. 

“Doctor Bushnell has taken the constable to the 
hospital,” he explained, “but, if there is anything 
I can do, I am at your service.” He stepped aside 
with a gesture that she was to come into the library 
and, turning his head, gave Tish an entreating look. 




BITS OF TALLOW 277 

Now that the opportunity had presented itself he 
decided to play a colossal game of bluffing. 

“Miss Sheridan, this is Detective Sergeant Tish 
of the New York police department. Sergeant Tish 
has been wounded—in the shooting on the third 
floor, you know.” 

“I—I am afraid I don’t know exactly what has 
happened; everything has been such a terrible, ex¬ 
cited jumble.” 

“One would hardly think so many things could 
happen in a quiet country place like this,” said 
Wiggly. 

Joan shuddered. 

“It’s been horrible! The man—the wounded man 

I saw on the stairs-” Her eyes were upon 

Tish; perhaps not so much upon Tish as his band¬ 
aged shoulder, where brown stains had seeped 
through the bandages. 

“Haskins is dead, ma’am,” Tish answered promptly, 
which was precisely one of the things Wiggly had 
not wanted him to say—not just yet. “I plugged 
him when he winged me with the constable’s gun, 
up in the storeroom.” 

“Doctor Bushnell told me,” Joan went on tremu¬ 
lously, “that it was this man who—who killed Kirk- 
lan’s wife.” 

Sergeant Tish caug^ht Wiggly’s pleading signal, 
hesitated a moment, and then temporized. 

“W-well,” he answered slowly, “I guess there’s 
what you’d call a division of opinion on that. Our 
newspaper friend don’t think so.” Wiggly could 
have choked him. Why did he have to tell her 
that he was a reporter! And why couldn’t Tish 



278 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


have given him a square show? Under his breath 
he cursed the headquarters man’s stubbornness. 

“Oh!” exclaimed Joan. “So he’s a newspaper re¬ 
porter. I thought he must be a detective, too.” 

“Give ’im credit,” grunted Tish; “he’s trying hard 
enough to he one.” He chuckled at his little joke. 

“This—this man,” pressed Joan Sheridan, now 
ignoring Wiggly entirely, “what was he doing in 
the house—in the storeroom? Was he a—a 
burglar?” 

“As a matter of fact. Miss Sheridan, Haskins was 
the woman’s husband.” 

Joan gasped. 

“You don’t mean—you can’t mean Helen?” 

“That’s it, ma’am; seems that she had not taken 
the trouble to get herself a divorce before she 
married Gilmore.” Briefly he recounted Haskins’ 
trouble with the New York police, his criminal 
record, his flight from Eighth Avenue Annie’s with 
the automatic, his coming to Greenacres, and his 
method of gaining entrance to the house. 

Joan, leaning forward tensely, listened with wide 
eyes and parted lips. 

“It was the gun—the gun that this criminal took 
away from you in New York that killed Helen?” she 
demanded breathlessly. Tish nodded. 

“Then,” she rushed on, her voice sinking to a 
whisper, “there—^there doesn’t seem to be much 
doubt that the man—Haskins—her—^lier legal hus¬ 
band—killed her? Did he say anything before he 
died?” 

Wiggly Price leaped forward and stood in front 
of her, lest Tish spoil whatever chance might he 
left. 


BITS OF TALLOW 


279 


“Let me ask you something,” he snapped out. 
“What made you so positive, hours before any one 
else in the house knew that such a person as 
Haskins existed, that Victor Sarbella was innocent 
of the murder?” 

Joan naturally was startled by this sudden verbal 
attack; all the blood had drained from her already 
pale face, leaving her features ghastly. Her eyes 
met his for a moment and then lowered. 

«Why_why, what a strange question!” she ex¬ 
claimed, but there was a noticeable nervous catch in 
her voice. “I—I never doubted Mr. Sarbella’s in¬ 
nocence.” 

“I know you didn’t, but what I want to know 
is—why?” 

Joan’s head went still lower, but Wiggly could 
see that her lips were quivering. 

“I—I just knew it.” 

“Intuition, eh?” 

“Call it anything you like.” 

“Was it intuition or knowledge?” Wiggly de¬ 
manded sharply. The girl gave a suppressed start, 
which Sergeant Tish missed entirely; in fact, Tish 
had not quite recovered from his surprise at the 
way the newspaper man had plunged in with these 
rapid-fire questions of his. Wiggly had a thrill of 
elation; his hunch had been right, and the girl 
knew something. 

His hand slid into his pocket, and his fingers 
closed about the bit of tallow that he had found 
on the floor of Helen Gilmore’s bedroom. 

“Look at this!” he commanded. Joan’s head 
raised at the compelling tone, but her gaze, as she 
stared at the misshapen, somewhat soiled lump of 


280 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


white, was merely blankly inquiring. It was quite 
clear, even to the suspicious reporter, that this meant 
nothing to her. Again his hand went to his pocket. 

“And look at this!” he ordered again, opening 
his fingers, revealing the black hairpin in his palm. 
“Look at it closely. Miss Sheridan, and tell if it 
doesn’t belong to you.” 

“How—how could I know that?” she stammered. 
“All hairpins are so much alike. What—what right 
have you to ask me all these questions in that tone?” 
She turned appealingly to Sergeant Tish. “Has this 
newspaper reporter a right to ask me these ques¬ 
tions?” 

“I guess that’s a reporter’s main business, asking 
questions,” grunted Tish, with a slow grin; quite 
evidently he wasn’t taking Wiggly’s cross-examina¬ 
tion with any seriousness. “Might as well answer 
’em, Miss Sheridan; no harm in that.” 

“This hairpin,” went on Wiggly, “was found on 
the floor beside Helen Gilmore’s chaise longue. She 
didn’t use black hairpins, and you do. Do you 
deny. Miss Sheridan, that you were in the woman’s 
sleeping room last night?” 

For a moment, the barest instant, Joan hesitated. 
“Yes,” she answered slowly, “I do deny it.” 

“Evidently you do not know,” Wiggly went on 
mercilessly, resorting to a trick in an effort to 
force the truth from her, “that just before Haskins 
died he made a statement. He told us that Helen 
managed to get the automatic out of his pocket 
before she sent him into hiding on the third floor. 
He was in the storeroom when he realized that she 
had got the gun away from him. He came back 
down the stairs with the intention of forcing her 


BITS OF TALLOW 


281 


to return it to him. He was in the hall when he 
heard the scream and the shot. 

“The door was open, the light was burning in¬ 
side, and Haskins saw the person who came out of 
that room!” This much, of course, was true, and 
for his purpose he did not consider it an unfair 
advantage, this failure to add that Haskins had re¬ 
fused to tell more. 

Joan Sheridan’s hands were frozen tightly about 
the arms of the chair; her eyes met Wiggly’s with 
a hunted, terrified look. She realized what he meant 
—^that he was virtually accusing her of the murder. 
But she was a quick-witted girl, Joan Sheridan; 
she knew that Sergeant Tish’s attitude would not 
have been so jovially casual if he too had suspected 
her of the shooting. She mastered herself won¬ 
derfully. 

“Why don’t you proceed and say exactly what 
you mean?” she asked. “What you mean is that 
you think I-” 

“Didn’t you?” whipped out Wiggly, leaning slightly 
forward until their eyes were level. This time her 
gaze did not falter; it met his without flinching. 

“No!” she answered firmly. “I deny everything 
you have said and intimated. If you have finished 
with your inquisition-” 

Price, realizing that his strategy had failed, offered 
no objection, as she moved to leave the room. But 
when her .steps had receded up the stairs, he turned 
angrily upon Tish. 

“A nice mess you made of things!” he exclaimed 
hotly. “Why did you have to tell her that I am a 
newspaper man?” 

“Well, ain’t you?” 




282 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“You didn’t give me a square shake. You queered 
any chance that I might have had to make her talk. 
You belittle me, and that took all the wind out 
of my sails. If you’d backed me up a little, we’d 
have had her dead to rights. If we could have made 
her believe that it was she whom Haskins saw com¬ 
ing out of the room after the shot was fired-” 

“Aw, forget it,” growled Tish; “she didn’t croak 
the woman any more than you did.” 

“Probably not premeditatively, but there’s one thing 
sure in my mind, and you’ll never convince me any 
different: Either Joan Sheridan did the shooting, 
or she knows who did—and she knows it wasn’t 
Haskins. She was on the edge of a breakdown, 
but you braced her right up. And you’re called a 
detective!” 

Sergeant Tish’s face flushed. “See here. I’m not 
going to have any newspaper scribbler talk that 
way to me! If I’d have let you have your way, 
you’d have made a fool out of me as well as your¬ 
self. Hairpins, tallow! Bah! I guess you think 
you are a detective—a real detective. That’s the 
way with you newspaper guys—always hunting for 
a chance to make the, police wrong, trying to make 
monkeys of the police department. You make me 
sick!” 

Wiggly’s ears moved violently. 

“You wait and see!” he retorted. “Sneer at hair¬ 
pins and tallow, but I know I’m on the right 
trail, and I’m going to stick on this job until I’ve 
followed it to the end.” 



CHAPTER XXVII 


WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 

F or all of his asserted confidence, which bordered 
upon boasting, Wiggly Price realized that he 
had a hard nut to crack. Swinging out of the 
library and Sergeant Tish’s presence, he went 
out to the porch and sat down to indulge himself 
in logic, speculation, guessing. He took the piece 
of tallow from his pocket again, staring at it fixedly; 
his belief that it had some vital part in the mystery 
had become an obsession; but there was one thing 
about it that discouraged him—Joan Sheridan had 
shown no perturbation when he had produced it 
before her eyes. 

Following a simple bit of logical reasoning, if 
the bit of tallow were so important as he insistently 
imagined, and if the girl had done the shooting, it 
was extremely strange that she had shown no signs 
of agitation when faced with this evidence. ■ He 
had been favorably impressed with the girl’s face; 
she seemed to be a sane, well-balanced young per¬ 
son. Certainly, he argued, it was difficult to believe 
that she would have committed the murder after 
cold premeditation; but might she not have yielded 
to a suddenly and insanely jealous impulse, sud¬ 
denly overwhelmed by the proximity of the auto¬ 
matic pistol? 

No matter who did the murder, Wiggly reasoned, 
it had not been a premeditated crime; the slayer had 
not gone to Helen Gilmore’s room with a weapon. 


284 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

The weapon was already there. These cogitations, 
of course, took it for granted that Haskins’ dying 
statement had been entirely truthful; the reporter 
might have agreed with Tish that the whole yarn 
was a lie, except that he could not imagine a 
desperate man like Haskins deliberately leaving the 
gun behind. With the death of the only person 
who knew of his presence in the house, Haskins 
had nothing to gain by cloaking the crime under the 
guise of suicide. 

That Joan Sheridan knew more than she had told, 
Wiggly was flatly certain; he had studied every 
changing expression of her face and he had seen 
the emotions which Tish had missed. Either she 
had committed the crime, or else she knew who did. 

Presuming her innocence, whom was she protect¬ 
ing with her silence? Sarbella? That did not 
seem logical. Why should she go to such great 
lengths to protect Sarbella? Yet, other than Sar¬ 
bella, Joan, and Haskins, there had been but one 
other person above the first floor when the shot 
was fired, and that was the other Mrs. Gilmore, 
Joan’s mother. 

“Ah!” thought Wiggly with a tingle of excitment, 
as his mind canvassed this possibility. “There is 
the person that the girl would protect, her mother. 
And the mother has kept closely to her room; the 
doctor had to look after her. Now what could have 
been her motive?” 

That was a puzzler, particularly so since he 
had not so much as put eyes on the woman. Per¬ 
haps—this was guessing merely—^the older Mrs. 
Gilmore had been mistress of Greenacres so long 
that she resented the appearance of an interloper; 


WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 285 


possibly she had taken the frenzied notion that she 
was to be dispossessed from this house which had 
been her home. 

Both Bates and Kirklan Gilmore, downstairs in 
the butler’s pantry when the scream and the shot 
had sounded through the quiet house, had been 
positive that they had got up the stairs before any 
one would have had a chance to come down; even 
Haskins had verified that. Their coming had been 
so swift as to cut off his chance of escape. Yes, 
decided Wiggly, counting Haskins out of it, there 
remained just three possible suspects, Joan, Sar- 
bella, and the elder Mrs. Gilmore. 

But the piece of tallow—^he was not getting the 
answer to that. He was still considering it when 
Doctor Bushnell’s automobile turned in at the Green¬ 
acres driveway. The doctor was returning from 
the hospital with the butler. A moment later the 
physician’s touring car came to a pause near the 
porch, and Wiggly got quickly to his feet. 

“How about Constable Griggs?” he asked. 

“He’ll make the grade, but it was a close call 
for him,” answered Doctor Bushnell. “Mighty bad 
fracture. H^’ll have to spend a week or better in 
the hospital. I’ve explained the whole situation, 
and he’s given me the jail keys and his permission 
to release Sarbella, which I shall do immediately. 
Has the district attorney arrived yet?” 

“Haven’t seen him,” replied Wiggly, eager for 
an opening that he might have a frank talk with 
the deputy coroner. 

“I telephoned him from the hospital and explained 
the situation in detail. He agreed with me that 
there seemed to be no doubt that Haskins killed the 


286 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


woman; said he’d come right over. I’ll drum up 
enough men for the coroner’s jury when I get to 
the village and release Sarbella. Whew! I’ll bet 
it’s a load off of his mind; it certainly looked bad 
for that fellow—mighty bad.” 

Bates had gone on into the house; the doctor had 
not got out of the car, his purpose in stopping evi¬ 
dently being merely to let out the butler. His 
hand was upon the gear lever, ready to start his 
car in motion again, but Wiggly put detaining 
fingers on his arm. 

“Just a moment. Doctor Bushnell,” he urged ear¬ 
nestly. “I know you’ve made up your mind that 
Haskins did the shooting, and that, since Haskins 
is dead, the case is virtually closed.” 

“Certainly it is,” nodded the physician. “I thought 
about it all the way on the drive to the hospital 
and back. The evidence against Haskins is all that 
any reasonable man would ask. Practically a mat¬ 
ter of legal formality, the inquest.” 

“I’m going to ask that you listen to me, with 
an open mind,” Wiggly insisted. “I want to talk 
with you about the case in utmost seriousness; 
I feel that you’re on the verge of making a grave 
blunder. I’ve found something-” 

“Not more hairpins?” broke in the doctor with 
a faint smile. 

“Doctor, I’m no novice in contact with crime; 
and, while I’m not nursing any notion that I’m a 
born detective, I’ve got eyes in my head and a 
logical sort of thinking apparatus. Without trying 
to toot my own horn, I might add that I’ve helped 
my paper solve a puzzle or so, after the police 



WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 287 

had fallen down on the job. Fm not saying that 
to boast; just want you to take me seriously.” 

Doctor Bushnell gave him a quick, sharp glance. 
“Fll listen, as we drive to the village,” he said. 
“Hop in.” 

Wiggly hopped in, and, as the car got into 
motion, so did his tongue. Absolute conviction 
that he was right enabled him to give a forceful 
presentation of his theories, and his short, punchy 
sentences were punctuated by frequent twitchings 
of his ears. 

He began by repeating in substance Haskins’ 
dying statement and emphasizing the improbability 
of Haskins leaving the gun behind, the utter use¬ 
lessness of Haskins covering up the murder be¬ 
neath the guise of suicide. From there he switched 
to the piece of tallow, saving any mention of 
Joan Sheridan until the last. The doctor, listening 
patiently, gave him a fair hearing; but it is a 
difficult job to convince a man who has already 
made up his mind to the contrary. 

“Now we come down to the nub of things,” 
Wiggly went on; swiftly he voiced his suspicions 
concerning Joan and his reasons for them. He 
told of his effort to cross-examine the girl and 
the results. 

Doctor Bushnell had an uneasy feeling, as he 
himself recalled Joan’s perturbation of the previous 
night, but he brushed these thoughts aside. 

“Do you realize,” he demanded sternly, “that 
you are intimating that Joan Sheridan might 

have- Oh, it’s absurd, preposterous! I refuse 

even to consider such a ridiculous notion. Why, 



288 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


I’ve known Joan all her life; a sweeter, finer 
young woman never lived.” 

“Did you happen to know that she’s in love 
with Gilmore?” Wiggly demanded, and at this 
suggestion of a motive the doctor’s eyes snapped 
angrily. 

“So that’s what you base all this wild talk 
on, eh? That reduces your reasoning to further 
absurdity.” 

“I’m not accusing her of the shooting, doctor, 
but I’m absolutely certain that she’s hiding some¬ 
thing; if not to protect herself, then to protect 
some one else. Her agitation-” 

“Humph!” broke in Doctor Bushnell. “What sort 
of a woman wouldn’t be agitated with all that’s 
happened at Greenacres during the past few hours. 
Whom would she be protecting? Answer me that! 

“It would have to be some one who was on 
the second floor when the shot was fired. Tell 
me something—does Gilmore or his stepmother 
own Greenacres?” 

“Gilmore does,” the doctor answered. “His step¬ 
mother’s share of the estate was in cash and 
other realty, hut I’m afraid she managed it poorly.” 

“Ah!” murmured Wiggly. “Then she was vir¬ 
tually dependent upon her stepson. If things had 
become so unpleasant for her at Greenacres after 
the arrival of the house’s new mistress that she 
could not stay-” 

The physician’s indignation became more pro¬ 
nounced. 

“Gad, what a villainous imagination you’ve got!” 
he exploded. “You mean now, I suppose, that 
Mrs. Gilmore did the shooting, and that Joan is 



WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 289 

shielding her? Young man, I’ve lost all patience 
with such nonsense. I refuse to listen to these 
ravings any longer. Any one, except a hare¬ 
brained idiot, would know that Haskins did the 
shooting. No more of this twaddle; I simply won’t 
listen to you!” 

“Then you won’t help me with a further in¬ 
vestigation?” 

“I shall certainly have no hand in such foolish¬ 
ness,” answered Doctor Bushnell with a tone of 
absolute finality. “Talk to the district attorney, 
if you insist, but I warn you that he’ll take no 
stock in it.” 

“Probably not,” Wiggly agreed gloomily, “but 
just the same I know Fm right.” 

They had reached the village, and the doctor’s 
car came to a halt in front of Borough Hall. 

“I’ll release Sarbella and then get busy drum¬ 
ming up my men for the coroner’s jury,” said 
Bushnell. “You’ve got a sensational enough story 
for your paper, as it is; forget that silly rubbish 
you’ve been talking to me.” 

Wiggly made no response, but followed the physi¬ 
cian from the machine into the village building 
and downstairs into the basement, where Victor 
Sarbella was a prisoner. At the sound of their 
approach, Sarbella came to the door of the narrow 
cage and peered out between the rusting steel 
bars, but he uttered no word of protest, of outraged 
innocence; only stared in a stony, narrow-eyed 
silence. 

“I’ve the best of news for you, Mr. Sarbella!” 
Doctor Bushnell exclaimed heartily. “I’ve come to 
let you out.” 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


290 

The prisoner’s head jerked up, his fingers tight¬ 
ened their grip about the bars of the cell door, 
his lips parted, and his eyes brightened with the 
look of relief that flashed across his face. 

“You mean,” he asked slowly, “that I am to 
be released unconditionally—that I have been re¬ 
moved from suspicion?” 

The doctor, with the constable’s keys, was strug¬ 
gling with the lock that would unfasten the bolts, 
the mechanism was badly in need of oiling, and 
it was giving him trouble. 

“Yes, unconditionally,” he answered. “We find 
that we have done you an injustice, although 
you must admit that we were within our rights, 
everything considered. The murderer of the Gil¬ 
more woman- Oh, curse this lock!” 

Sarbella pressed his body closer to the bars. 
“Yes?” he demanded with an eager impatience. 
“The murderer—go on, man!” 

The lock finally yielded, enabling the physician 
to turn the handle that slid the bolts, and the door 
opened. Victor Sarbella was a free man. 

“Tell me,” he commanded again. “Who--” 

The newspaper reporter sensed his grave concern, 
his anxiety—and wondered. 

“Luckily for you,” answered Doctor Bushnell, 
“the slayer was still in the house—a criminal who, 
it developed, was the woman’s undivorced hu&band.” 

“Thank Heaven!” breathed Sarbella, and it was 
apparent that this news was a great relief to 
him. 

Briefly the doctor related the facts. 

“What a blessedly fortunate ending!” murmured 




WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 291 


the artist. “I was afraid of other things—some¬ 
thing more terrible.” 

“Fm driving back to Greenacres after I get 
together a jury for the inquest,” went on the 
physician. “Fm anxious to get it over with as 
quickly as possible, for my private practice has 
to wait until this official business is disposed of, 
and my patients are liable to lose their patience.” 
He chuckled a little at his own pun. “You may 
ride back to Greenacres with me, if you choose.” 

“Thanks,” nodded Sarbella, “I will.” 

The three men made their way out of the base¬ 
ment cell room and to the street, where the doctor 
said that they could wait in his car, if they liked. 
A moment later he was hurrying along the village 
thoroughfare in quest of his jurors, picking up 
practically the first citizens that he encountered. 
Sarbella got into the rear of the touring car, 
and Wiggly Price sat beside him. 

“You seem to be well out of a bad situation,” 
said the newspaper man. 

The released suspect nodded soberly. “Yes,” he 
agreed, “a bad situation—an overwhelming situa¬ 
tion. Circumstantial evidence can be a damning 
thing. Perhaps I owe something to you; your 
attitude, when you came to the cell about the 
cigarette-” 

“You do not owe your release to me, Sarbella; 
it was the appearance of Sergeant Tish, his identi¬ 
fication of the gun and the presence of Haskins 
in the house.” Wiggly paused for a moment with 
his eyes on the other’s face. “You were greatly 
relieved when you heard the doctor’s explanation 
of the tragedy?” 



292 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Victor Sarbella inclined his head. 

“I was!” he exclaimed fervently. “Knowing 
my own innocence, I am afraid that I was as 
much inclined to suspect other people as other 
people to suspect me. I am afraid that I even 
suspect my friend Gilmore.” 

“Why Gilmore?” asked Wiggly. “He had a 
perfect alibi—downstairs when the shot was fired.” 

“Yes, I know,” murmured Sarbella, “but the 
poor chap was so overwrought, so beside himself, 
so obsessed 'with the suspicion that there had 
been an—ah—affair between me and—and his wife 
—^but let us not talk of that.” 

“I wonder,” pressed Wiggly, but careful to make 
his tone carelessly casual, “if you also suspected 
Miss Sheridan?” 

“Eh?” exclaimed Sarbella, turning quickly, and 
then he laughed briefly. “Yes, I think I even 
suspected her. Her attitude it was—ah—very 
strange, it seemed to me. Only excitement, of 
course, as we know the facts now; but at the 
time—well, I hardly knew what to think.” 

Wiggly’s ears twitched slightly. Further con¬ 
firmation of his theory! Yet it convinced no one 
except himself. 

“I condemn myself for harboring any such sus¬ 
picions,” went on Sarbella musingly, “but it was 
strange. She was up, had not retired, and yet 
she had not heard the scream or the shot.” 

“What!” exclaimed Wiggly; this was something 
new to him. He had not known that. “You mean 
that she was up and dressed?” 

Sarbella shot him a quick, curious glance, saw 
his eagerness, and was warned to sudden silence. 


WIGGLY REMAINS UNCONVINCED 293 

“Let us talk of something else,” he said. “Am 
I to understand that there are still any doubts 
in your mind- 

“Haskins made a dying statement in which he 
denied the murder,” said Wiggly; “he said, how¬ 
ever, that he did see the murderer coming out 
of the room after the shot was fired.” 

Sarbella gave no guilty start, such as might 
have been expected, if Haskins’ story was true, 
and it had been himself that Haskins had seen 
coming out of Helen Gilmore’s room. 

“What could you expect but lies from the lips 
of such a man?” the artist asked. “Thank Heaven 
that the ending is as it is. This man, this Haskins, 
must have been the husband who went to my 
poor brother with the story that unbalanced his 
reason and sent him to his death. Poor Andrea! 
The hand of Fate has avenged him! There is a 
God of retribution!” 

Wiggly Price made one more effort. His fingers 
went to his pocket for that puzzling piece of 
tallow. 

“Had another look around that room this morn¬ 
ing,” he said. “On the floor I found several pieces 
of this.” 

Victor Sarbella turned and glanced at the white, 
black-flecked, shapeless lump, but he betrayed no 
more visible signs of emotion than had Joan 
Sheridan. 

“What is it?” he asked, frowning. “What of 
it?” 

“Nothing!” grunted Wiggly Price, as his arm 
raised in a disgustedly impulsive gesture to toss 
it into the street. Even his own persistent faith 


294 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


in this as a vital clew was being badly shaken. 
Yet his fingers closed about the bit of tallow, 
and he returned it to his pocket again. His mouth 
tightened. 

“Nothing—so far,” he added. He was one of 
those chaps who just naturally can’t quit. 

Sarbella gave him a curious glance, shrugged 
his shoulders, and dismissed both the man and 
the bit of tallow as of no further importance; 
then he lapsed into a moody sort of silence. A 
moment later Doctor Bushnell returned to the 
car; it had taken him no time at all to drum 
his jury for the inquest. 

“All right,” he announced, “we’ll be getting back 
and having things over with. Shouldn’t take much 
longer than an hour: Presley, our local garage 
man, will bring the jurors out in a bus, and they’ll 
be no great distance behind us.” 

He took the wheel, started the motor, and the 
three men were on their way back to Greenacres. 
Wiggly sat stiffly in the seat beside Sarbella, 
trying in vain to drive his brain over the hurdles. 
Time with him was short, for, as the doctor had 
just said, in another hour or so it would be over. 
The law would have finished with the Gilmore 
affair and write the easiest, most obvious ending 
to the dramatic business of the past night, charging 
the whole tragic account to Don Haskins and, 
through his death, mark the whole deed as “Paid.” 

Once the verdict of the coroner’s jury was in, 
Wiggly knew, it would be next to the impossible 
to have the case reopened again. He had just 
about sixty minutes longer to prove he was right, 
and that the rest of them were wrong. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


THE BLACK SMUDGE 

A long the ribbon-smooth road Doctor Bushnell 
shot the car at a lively clip; one couldn’t, 
blame him, of course, for thinking of his private 
practice, and one of his patients had been telephon¬ 
ing for him all morning. He would have been 
the last man to hurry the Gilmore case to a legal 
finish, if he had thought there was anything 
to be gained by prolonging the investigation; but 
he considered that the affair had been solved to 
all reasonable satisfaction. 

In less than five minutes they arrived at Green¬ 
acres, and hardly had the three men stepped from 
the machine to the porch of the house when 
Kirklan Gilmore, evidently having seen them from 
a window, came rushing out, both hands stretched 
out toward the artist. There were tears in his 
eyes, and his voice was husky, trembling with 
emotion. 

“Thank God, Victor!” he cried. “Fve just 
heard the whole inside of things from a man, the 
New York detective, that you’re cleared, absolutely 
cleared! You don’t know what a relief it has 
been to me, although I never did think, even ^ when 
things were the blackest, that you did it. 

“And I appreciate your loyalty, Kirklan,” an¬ 
swered Sarbella. The hands of the two men 
remained clasped. 


296 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Forgive me, Victor, for thinking last night that 
you—that you and Helen-” 

“That there had been an—ah—affair between 
your wife and me,” finished Sarbella. “Yes, I 
was afraid that my silence would put dark thoughts 
into your head, but-” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” broke in Gilmore, 
and a peculiar expression convulsed his features. 
“Why didn’t you tell me last night, out in the 
study, that she was the woman over whom your 
brother-” 

Sarbella shook his head. 

“No! I could not in honor do that,” he protested. 
“You were my friend, and the woman was your 
wife. My lips were sealed. She was your wife; 
you loved her.” 

Kirklan Gilmore’s face was still white, haggardly 
drawn, but he was no longer the broken wreck 
of a man, tottering upon the brink of a mental col¬ 
lapse, that he had been some hours before. He 
seemed to have recovered from the first over¬ 
powering shock of horror; Doctor Bushnell’s course 
in placing him under the influence of a sedative 
had apparently been a most wise one. 

At Sarbella’s words his lips twitched piteously, 
but he managed to keep control of himself. 

“No,” he said slowly, huskily, “I was in love 
with—^with the woman I thought her to be—in 
love with an ideal, a creation of my own imagina¬ 
tion. The woman I thought her to be did not 
exist—except in my own infatuated fancies. And 

she was not my wife. She- Oh, what a 

nightmare it’s been—^what a nightmare 1” 






THE BLACK SMUDGE 


297 


Doctor Bushnell stepped swiftly to his side and, 
taking his arm, urged him toward the house. 

“Keep a grip on yourself, Kirklan,” he murmured 
in a kindly, paternal tone. “It’s been a pretty 
terrible business, old man, but that thing we mortals 
call fate has cut a lot of the strings to the tangle 
for you. It is better that things are as they are; 
it saves a vast number of troublesome complications. 
It saves—^well, trucking a lot of mire through the 
courts.” 

Gilmore compressed his lips and lowered his 
head. “Yes,” he agreed dully, “you’re right about 
that; it saves the courts.” 

“Buck up, Kirklan! As you say, the woman 
you thought her to he did not exist.” 

“Ah,” murmured Victor Sarbella, “but losing 
an ideal is one of the hardest things in life.” 

The novelist, leaning a little on the doctor’s 
friendly arm, made his way slowly into the house. 
Sarbella and Wiggly Price followed. 

“Have all the legal details been satisfied?” asked 
Gilmore, as he lowered himself into a chair. 

“There is, of course, no question but that-” 

“But that Haskins killed her,” finished Doctor 
Bushnell. “Absolutely none, Kirklan. There re¬ 
mains now only the inquest—a double inquest 

in this case. One jury will suffice for both; the 
verdict, of course, is a foregone conclusion.” 

There fell a brief silence, Gilmore’s eyes staring 
straight in front of him, with a dull, vacant 

expression. No doubt he was thinking of the 

bronze-haired, beautiful woman who lay upstairs, 
cold in death—^the woman who might have been. 

“Everything has become quite clear to me,” he 


298 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


said slowly, more as if speaking to himself. “She 
was making a visit to this Haskins in New York 
day before yesterday, when Atchinson saw her 
on the street. She must have gone there in 
answer to a letter that my butler tells me she 
received that morning.” 

“Atchinson?” Doctor Bushnell asked inquiringly. 

“My publisher,” Gilmore replied. “Since she was 
employed by the publishing firm before our mar¬ 
riage, Atchinson knew her quite well. He said it 
was she, but I thought he must be mistaken. She 
had told me that she was going to motor into 
the country. I wonder how it would have all 
come out if the man, Haskins, had not been 
trapped in the storeroom?” 

No one responded to that musing question. With¬ 
drawn unobtrusively into one corner, Wiggly had 
again taken the lump of tallow from his pocket 
and was meditatively rubbing his fingers over it. 
Suddenly his attention centered upon those black 
specks that he had taken for granted were dirt, 
caused, perhaps, by a soiled shoe sole pressing down 
on it, as it had lain upon the floor of the room up¬ 
stairs; he saw now that those dark, almost pin-point 
discolorations were imbedded into the substance. 
This, however, increased rather than solved the 
puzzle. 

“The district attorney has come, hasn’t he?” 
asked Doctor Bushnell. “I took it for granted 
that it was his car I saw at the side of the 
driveway, as we came up.” 

Kirklan Gilmore nodded absently. “Yes,” he 
said, “a young fellow—^the assistant district attor¬ 
ney, I believe. Lasker, I think his name is. 


THE BLACK SMUDGE 299 

He’s upstairs looking around with that detective 
fellow, Sergeant Fish.” 

“Tish,” corrected the physician. “Quite a game 
sort, Tish; it was he who shot Haskins.” 

Again Gilmore nodded. “So he told me,” he 
said. 

“I think I’ll go upstairs,” added the physician, 
“It won’t be long now until the men who are 
to serve on the jury arrive.” He glanced at Wiggly 
with a patronizing sort of smile. “Are you coming 
up with me and look for more—more hairpins, 
young man?” 

The newspaper man smiled grimly. 

“I’ll go up with you,” he said, “but it’s not 
hairpins that I’m mainly interested in right now; 
it’s this confounded piece of tallow.” He turned 
his eyes toward the novelist and thought he saw 
a sudden tightening of Gilmore’s muscles, a sup¬ 
pressed start. He was not so sure about it. 
“Tell me, Mr. Gilmore, were candles used frequently 
in the house here?” 

Gilmore did not reply for a moment. “Candles?” 
he murmured. “Why, my dear sir, what a peculiar 
question. I don’t believe I understand. 

Doctor Bushnell, moving toward the stairway, 
paused with a brief, discounting laugh. 

“Our enthusiastic newspaper friend, Kirklan,” he 
explained, “thinks we haven’t begun to get at 
the bottom of things. He’s found a few pieces 
of tallow candle on the floor of the room upstairs; 
he’s trying to attach some importance to it—just 
because he doesn’t hit upon a ready explanation 
to it, I suppose. I’m afraid we’ve humored him 


300 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


a little too much, in gratitude for the first assistance 
that he gave us in identifying your wife.” 

Gilmore was frowning slightly. 

“And Fm afraid that I can’t help him explain 
his little mystery, doctor,” he said. “So far as I 
can recall, there aren’t any candlesticks in Helen s 
room; nor in my room, which is adjoining. Still 
—he paused for a moment—“it does occur to me, 
gentlemen, that the third floor has never been 
wired for electricity; the storeroom is so seldom 
visited. If Haskins had wanted to have a light 
up there, a candle would have afforded about the 
only possible illumination for him.” 

“Ah!” exclaimed the doctor. “See, Price, there’s 
the explanation for you! The woman must have 
got Haskins a candle, and he carried it down with 
him when he shot her. He probably mashed it 
underfoot and-” 

“No, that will hardly do,” Wiggly interrupted 
with a quick negative jerk of his head. “In the 
first place, I can’t believe that Haskins would 
have been fool enough to have taken a light with 
him to the storeroom; too much chance of the 
illuminated window attracting attention. Secondly, 
this tallow was broken into a good many small 
pieces; the trodding of a foot on a candle wouldn’t 
do that; it would only have mashed it, and it 
wouldn’t have scattered it several places about the 
room.” 

Doctor Bushnell shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, 
what matter!” he exclaimed impatiently. “What¬ 
ever explanation there is would probably be ab¬ 
surdly simple.” 

Before the physician could gain the stairs, Ser- 


THE BLACK SMUDGE 


301 


geant Tish and the assistant district attorney were 
coming down. The latter was a youngish, blond 
fellow, with rimless spectacles glistening in front 
of pale-blue eyes; one could see that he appreciated 
the gravity of the situation and the importance 
of his own official position, and that, beneath his 
outward pretense of grim poise, he was a rather 
nervous and inexperienced young man. 

One look at young Lasker told Wiggly how futile 
it would be to approach him with any theory 
calculated to upset the accepted situation; the law¬ 
yer’s words confirmed this impression. 

“Ah, Doctor Bushnell!” he exclaimed, frowning 
his best official frown and clearing his throat 
several times. “I have just been over the ground 
with Sergeant Tish, who has been kind enough to 
lay all of the facts before me—in quite a com¬ 
prehensive manner. I have canvassed the evidence 
thoroughly. I quite agree with you, doctor, that 
but one sensible hypothesis can be drawn. I 
would even call it more than an hypothesis. 
The evidence is quite clear-cut and incontrovertible. 
Sergeant Tish’s markmanship has—fortunately for 
him, however—cheated the electric chair of its 
grim function. There can be no question of Has¬ 
kins’ guilt; absolutely no question.” ^ 

“In spite of hairpins, tallow, and such stuff,” 
grunted Tish, with a grin at Wiggly, evidently 
taking a keen delight in belittling him. The young 
assistant district attorney glanced at the newspaper 
man and lifted his hands in a gesture of deprecia¬ 
tion. 

“So this is the journalist you were telling me 
about. If positive evidence were lacking, my dear 


302 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


sir, it might he very well to bear these things 
in mind, but in a clear-cut case of this kind such 
minor trifles become entirely irrelevant and im¬ 
material. Any other theory than that of Haskins’ 
guilt is absolutely untenable. I am willing. Doctor 
Bushnell, that the inquest shall proceed with the 
evidence in hand.” 

“I think I hear Presley’s bus coming along the 
road now,” nodded the doctor. “He’s bringing the 
men from the village.” 

From outside there came the sound of the lumber¬ 
ing, noisy conveyance, bearing the coroner’s jury. 
All attention at the moment was focused in this 
direction, and Wiggly, without a word to any one 
-—he was playing an absolutely lone hand now— 
made for the stairs. No one registered any objec¬ 
tion to his taking another visit to the second floor, 
but halfway up he turned and saw Kirklan Gil¬ 
more’s eyes fixed upon him in a sort of set, 
expressionless stare. Was it expressionless? Wig¬ 
gly had a feeling that the blank look might be 
concealing a degree of—^well, perhaps of wary 
apprehension. 

“Humph!” Wiggly said under his breath. “Gil¬ 
more was downstairs when his wife was killed; 
he couldn’t have had a hand in it, and yet, dash 
it all, I did get a reflex from him when it came 
to mentioning the tallow. And he was pretty 
prompt in trying to find an explanation for the 

stuff being in the room. I wonder-” But what 

he wondered was too vague even for his thoughts. 
Passing on up the steps to the head of the stairs, 
he let himself into the murdered woman’s bed¬ 
chamber. 


THE BLACK SMUDGE 


303 


“I don’t know what I can expect to find more 
than I have,” he told himself discouragingly, “but 
the old line in the copy book used to tell me: 
‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ 
Here goes for another try. Gilmore was startled 
when I mentioned tallow candles. Why?” 

Obviously that question could never be answered 
until he found out for himself what part the tallow 
had played in the tragedy, until he had explained 
its mysterious presence in the room. He walked 
about the room slowly several times and then dropped 
to hands and knees, crawling back and forth, his 
eyes close to the rug, picking up all of the tallow 
that he could find. Presently he had quite a little 
accumulation of the stuff, gathered from a surpris¬ 
ingly wide radius. 

The palm of his hand was pricked by a sharp 
surface hidden from view in the nap of the rug— 
another fragment of the broken vase. The vase 
hadn’t impressed him greatly; for that was one 
thing that could be explained. As Tish had sug¬ 
gested, if it hadn’t been tipped from the table, 
Helen Gilmore might have flung it at the murderer 
in a desperate effort at self-defense. 

Yet, as he was about to toss aside the fragment 
of porcelain, his jaw sagged, and a startled ex¬ 
planation came from his parted lips, for there 
clung to what had once been the inside of the 
vase, a small particle of tallow! 

“Gosh!” breathed Wiggly, his ears twitching vio¬ 
lently. “The tallow was inside of the vase when 
it was broken! The two go together; I’d never 
thought of that. By George, I’ve been missing 
something!” 


304 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


The shattered porcelain vase had, in light of 
this discovery, taken on a real importance within 
Wiggly’s mind. Hastily he began crawling on 
hands and knees about the room, retrieving every 
piece of it that he could find. When he had got 
together all of it he could find, he placed all the 
pieces on the table, with the tallow in a separate 
pile and, drawing up a chair, sat down and began 
to study it. Still no inspirational solution flashed 
through his mind; he began at nowhere and ended 
at the same place. Times without number he 
handled the pieces, absently sorting and resorting 
them, and at last, with a hopeless sigh of defeat, 
he realized that an explanation was beyond his 
powers of either deduction or imagination; he was 
simply beating his head against a stone wall. 

“Its no use!” he muttered under his breath. 
“Possibly I’m wrong after all! possibly- 

Outside the closed door in the hall he heard 
voices. Bates had come upstairs to call Joan 
Sheridan and her mother to attend the proceedings 
down in the library. Wiggly wondered if they 
would ask him to testify; probably not. Doctor 
Bushnell and the assistant district attorney would 
not want him upsetting things and confusing the 
accepted explanation by flinging his unproven the¬ 
ories at the jury. 

For a moment or so the newspaper man debated. 

“I know I’ve no authority to do it, and I will 
probably get thrown out on my ear, if I’m caught 
at it; but I’ve got a notion to have one more 
try.” 

Leaving the piece of broken vase and the lumps 
of tallow on the table where he had been studying 


THE BLACK SMUDGE 


305 


them with so little result, he turned toward the 
door, slipping quietly into the hall. The sound of 
voices came up the open stairway; Doctor Bushnell, 
in his capacity as deputy coroner, was swearing 
in the jury. 

Wiggly made for the wing of the house where 
he knew Joan Sheridan’s room to be. He had 
never rid himself of the notion that she knew 
something about the murder that she would never 
tell unless it was forced from her unwilling lips; 
and the only force to which she would respond 
would be evidence. 

Her room was unlocked. He let himself in with 
the unconscious stealthiness that overtakes a man 
who finds himself entering unbidden places. Clos¬ 
ing the door gently behind him, the reporter straight¬ 
way went about the business in hand, which 
was to determine whether or not the room might 
not reveal something that would incriminate Joan 
Sheridan. 

First, he went to the girl’s dressing table; the 
top of it, except for some silver-backed toilet 
articles, was barren; but in the right-hand drawer 
he did find hairpins. Quickly he compared them 
with the one in his pocket; they were of the same 
size, color, and pattern. As alike as the proverbial 
two peas in a pod; yet that in itself was slim 
proof, for, as Joan herself had said, all hairpins 
are so much alike. He had to have more than 
that—a great deal more than that. 

Wiggly was closing the drawer when he noted 
for the first time the black smudge on his finger— 
a smallish streak which flecked free from the skin, 
as he rubbed at it with the ball of his thumb. 


306 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


“Hello!” he exclaimed under his breath. “What’s 
that? Where did I get it?” With a curious and 
puzzled frown he stared at the dark spot on his 
finger, as he continued to fleck off the black, grainy 
particles. He lifted his hand to his nose and 
sniffed, and, as he caught the faint, but unmistak¬ 
able, odor, his ears fairly did a dance at the sides 
of his head. 

“Great guns,” he whispered. “It’s powder— 
burned gunpowder! Where did I get that?” His 
bulging eyes swept the dressing table and the 
only articles that he had touched since coming 
into Helen Gilmore’s room. And then he thought 
of the candle tallow and the black specks that 
had mocked him with their enigma. Slowly, 
through a fog of bewilderment and incredulity, 
there pierced a dawning light of understanding. 
He had solved the murder! 


CHAPTER XXIX 

“let the guilty man speak!” 

T he young assistant district attorney and Doctor 
Bushnell had indeed reduced the double inquest 
to a cut-and-dried formality, and the proceeding 
was heading swiftly toward its anticipated con¬ 
clusion. Extra chairs had been brought into the 
library, and it was here that the hearing was in 
progress. 

In his capacity as deputy coroner, Bushnell pre¬ 
sided at a small table, and near him, at his right, 
was the young attorney, blinking with official sever¬ 
ity from behind his rimless glasses; at the doctor’s 
left was the witness chair which faced the jury. 
The latter were an assorted lot of village types— 
Mr. Judson, the ordinarily genial grocer, with his 
fat, stubby fingers locked tightly in front of his 
ample middle; Henry Blackburn, a local fire-insur¬ 
ance agent, who was tall, lean and hatchet faced, 
Jim Striker, local manager of the telephone com¬ 
pany; and so on down the list. 

There had been no move to bar any one from 
hearing the testimony of the other witnesses. Be¬ 
hind the jury chairs Joan Sheridan murmured 
soothingly in an effort to calm her mother’s muffled, 
hysterical sobbing; a little apart sat Kirklan Gil¬ 
more, slumped deep into a chair, chin on his chest 
and his eyes half closed; but he was listening 
carefully; not a syllable was escaping him. Victor 


308 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


Sarbella was seated nearest the door; his dark 
eyes were roving restlessly about the room. 

Sergeant Tish had been the first witness, identify¬ 
ing the gun which had killed Helen Gilmore and 
recounting, for the benefit of the jury, how it had 
got to Greenacres. Doctor Bushnell previously had 
given an outline of the facts, as he had found 
them. 

Bates, the butler, followed Tish and did not forget 
to color his account of the happenings with a none- 
too-modest tribute to his own shrewd deductions 
that it had been murder and not suicide. He was 
proud of that little achievement. He told how he 
had been fast asleep when the ringing of the door¬ 
bell had awakened him, and he had got up to admit 
Gilmore, who had been out at the studio and had 
forgotten his keys; he described how he had been 
in the butler’s pantry; that he had just finished 
making Gilmore a toddy, which the latter was 
drinking, when both of them had heard the scream, 
closely followed by the shot. 

Joan Sheridan suppressed a shiver, but no one 
noticed that. 

“After that. Bates?” urged Doctor Bushnell. 

“Mr. Gilmore and I hurried upstairs. When 
we was about halfway up we heard a door slam 
shut—Haskins when he scooted back up to the 
attic, I guess. The door to the younger Mrs. 
Gilmore’s room was open, and the light was 
burning. I went in first, and there she was— 
all covered with blood, the gun on the floor beside 
the couch. It looked like suicide, but I knew it 
wasn’t, because she wouldn’t have screamed before 
shooting herself. She might have screamed after 


“LET THE GUILTY MAN SPEAK 1” 309 

she did it, but the shot was fired after she 
screamed. More than that; the door was open, 
and, like I said, people don’t shoot themselves with 
the door open.” 

“A very good deduction. Bates,” nodded the 
doctor. 

“Yes, sir; I rather thought so myself,” agreed 
Bates. 

Other questions and answers followed, and the 
entire ground was covered swiftly, but thoroughly. 
The jurors were then asked if they wished to 

interrogate the witness. None of them did, and 
Bates was excused. 

“Miss Sheridan, merely as a matter of formality, 
will you please take the witness chair?” murmured 
Doctor Bushnell, and Joan, her face becoming a 
shade more pale with the ordeal, got slowly to 
her feet and walked to the front of the room. 

Kirklan Gilmore’s body tensed, and his hand 

clenched, but he did not lift his eyes. 

“I want you to understand,” the doctor told 
her gently, after taking her oath as a witness, 

“that this is a mere formality. You will please tell 
us, in your own words, just what you know about 
the tragedy.” 

Joan Sheridan was plainly nervous; her fingers, 
resting in her lap, were twisting about each other, 
and for a moment she did not answer. 

“There is nothing—nothing that I can tell,” she 
answered in a strained, muffled voice. 

“As I understand—in fact, from what you told 
me—you did not hear the fatal shot. 

Joan’s voice became a little clearer, as she 
answered: “No, I did not hear the fatal shot.” 


310 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


‘T might explain to the jury,” added the doctor, 
“that Miss Sheridan’s room is in another part of 
the house.” 

From outside the library came the sound of 
hurrying feet, as Wiggly Price came down the 
stairs, two steps at a time. Just outside the library 
he paused, screened behind the portieres. Across 
his arm was a woman’s silk dressing gown, and in 
his hand was a handkerchief, caught up at the 
corners and sagging with the weight of the broken 
vase and the particles of candle tallow. 

“Just the psychological moment!” he said under 
his breath. “It’s made to order.” 

“And there is nothing more that you can ^dd. 
Miss Sheridan?” asked Doctor BushnelL 

“There is nothing more that I can say,” she 
answered. 

“That will be all,” murmured the doctor. 

Wiggly Price entered the room, billowing aside 
the portieres, as he swept past them, and his ears 
were wiggling for all they were worth. The 
silk dressing gown across his arm added to the 
dramatic effect of his entrance. 

“Just a moment. Miss Sheridan!” he exclaimed. 
“What you really mean is that there is nothing 
more you want to say. But I am very much 
afraid that you will have to say something, whether 
you want to or not.” 

Doctor Bushnell leaped angrily to his feet, his 
eyes snapping. 

“What do you mean by this. Price?” he shouted. 
“I forbid-” 

“I demand,” broke in Wiggly, “that Miss Sheridan 
be forced to explain several things, including why 



“LET THE GUILTY MAN SPEAK 1” 311 

she tried to clean spots from the sleeve of this 
dressing gown that she was wearing last night.” 
Joan had started to her feet, but sank limply back 
in her chair, a moan upon her lips. 

“Look at her face!” cried Wiggly. “Isn’t that 
proof enough for you? Don’t look at me—^look 
at her!” 

Joan’s face was chalk white, and she swayed in 
her chair and would have fallen, had not the 
assistant district attorney leaped forward to support 
her. 

“Look at this dressing gown!” went on Wiggly 
in a rush of words. “Look at the sleeve, here. 

I just took it out of her closet a minute ago; the 
odor of a cleaning fluid, chloroform, can still be 
detected. And it didn’t take out the spots. She 
didn’t know that cold water was the best thing 
to remove bloodstains.” He swung upon Joan. “Do 
you deny. Miss Sheridan, that these are blood¬ 
stains? Do you deny that you attempted to remove 
them after the murder?” 

Joan’s mother screamed shrilly. “It’s a lie!” she 
moaned. “It’s a lie. He’s trying to make it appear 
that my little girl-A merciful unconscious¬ 

ness gathered her in. 

Doctor Bushnell, dazed to a point of speechless-, 
ness, stared from the accusing newspaper man to 
Joan. There could be no denying the wild terror 
that gripped her. 

“If she does deny it,” went on Wiggly, “a chemi¬ 
cal analysis will establish that it is blood ^human 
blood.” 

Doctor Bushnell at last found voice. “Joan, 
he cried, “do you understand what this means? 



312 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


This man is virtually accusing you of murder. 
In Heaven’s name, say something!” 

But Joan Sheridan, her lips twitching, shook her 
head. “I—I didn’t—do it!” she whispered. ‘T 
didn’t do it, hut I have nothing to say—absolutely 
nothing to say.” 

“But, you’ve got to say something!” the doctor 
urged desperately. “Silence like this-” 

Again she shook her head. “I’ve nothing to 
say,” she repeated. 

In the excitement that had accompanied this 
sudden and amazing turn of things, all attention 
had been centered upon the quivering, ashen-faced 
girl in the witness chair, and no one—unless, 
perhaps, it was Wiggly Price from the corner 
of his eye—had observed Kirklan Gilmore. The 
novelist had leaped to his feet and clutched at the 
back of his chair with palsied fingers. Tears were 
streaming down his cheeks. 

“Great God!” he whispered. “That she would 
make a sacrifice like that!” His voice raised. 
“Tell them!” he commanded hoarsely. “Tell them, 
Joan—the truth!” 

Joan sobbed wildly, uncontrollably. “Oh, Kirk!” 
she moaned. “Kirk—don’t! In Heaven’s name— 
don’t!” 

“Since Joan will not talk,” said Kirklan Gilmore, 
“I will.” 

Wiggly Price dropped his handkerchief to the 
table, and the loosened corners fell back, revealing 
the little pile of broken porcelain and the bits of 
tallow. 

“Let the guilty man speak!” he said. “If he does 
not—^the evidence is here.” 



CHAPTER XXX 


WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER 

'THE room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore 
A made his way slowly to the front of the room 
and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water 
that rested upon the coroner’s table. He gulped 
a drink nervously. He put the glass down clumsily. 

“It’s impossible—utterly impossible!” Doctor 
Bushnell muttered helplessly. “Gilmore was down¬ 
stairs—Bates was with him—when the shot was 
fired on the second floor. I can’t understand-” 

Kirklan Gilmore did not sit down, but stood 
there, leaning heavily against the table, facing the 
coroner’s jury. 

“The truth,” he said huskily, “would have been 
best in the first place; the truth is always best. 
I suppose any chance that I may have had is gone 
now. Yes, I—I killed her—with that gun.” He 
pointed to the broken bits of Wiggly’s handkerchief. 
“The evidence is there. I felt that it was coming 
when—when this reporter started talking—about 
the tallow.” 

“Suffering cats!” This interruption came from 
Sergeant Tish, who gave Wiggly Price an uncanny 
look of reluctant admiration. 

“It began,” went on Gilmore in a heavy, toneless 
voice, “on Monday, when Helen went to New York 
to meet Haskins, her—her husband.” He winced, 
as he said that. “That night she wanted money to 
pay the blackmail of the man’s silence. She lied 


314 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


to me, and I knew that she lied, but she would 
not tell me the truth. 

“The next day Sarbella came, and I saw—we all 
saw—^that there was something—something that 
terrified her. I got Sarbella out to the studio, tried 
to force him to tell. I suspected a—a love affair. 
I was mad with jealousy. He gave me his word 
that he had never so much as seen her before, but 
I thought that was a gentleman’s lie. It was 
true. 

“That night—last night only, but it seems an 
eternity—I stayed for a long time out at the 
studio, tortured by those black thoughts. It was 
after eleven o’clock when I came back to the house. 
Everybody had retired. I went upstairs to my room. 
It was next to Helen’s. I was trying to compose 
myself before I went in to her to demand the truth. 
I had no weapon; there was no thought of violence. 

“The connecting door between our rooms was 
locked—from her side, but through the panel I 
thought I heard hushed voices. I thought—what 
could I think other than that Sarbella might be 
in there with her? Somehow I hesitated, and it 
must have been while I debated, trying to think, 
that she got Haskins out and to the third floor. 

“And then I went in to her. She was sitting 
in a chair, facing the door. I didn’t see the gun; 
it was on the floor at her feet. My mind was in 
such a daze that I hardly think I can make it 
clear just how it happened. I think I told her that 
there had been a man in her room, that I had 
heard them talking. 

“I know that I was wild looking, disheveled, hag¬ 
gard. I had not slept at all the night before. 


WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER 


315 


Perhaps she thought I meant to kill her. Anyhow, 
she leaned over and picked up the gun swiftly. 
That was the first time I had noticed it. 

“ ‘Go away,’ she told me. But I did not go 
away; I had come for the truth, the truth from 
her own lips. I told her to put down the gun, 
and when she did not, I did a very foolish thing; 
I attempted to take it from her by force. I 
couldn’t control myself. 

“That was when it happened—in the struggle 
for the gun. It was her own hand that pulled the 
trigger. I swear before Heaven that is true.” He 
paused a moment, breathing heavily. 

“The muzzle must have been pressed close to 
her body,” he went on; “that was why there was 
scarcely any explosion; her body muffled the shot. 
She collapsed, and I put her on the couch. She 
did not move or speak. That is how it happened.” 

The young assistant district attorney gulped, as 
if he were choking, and Doctor Bushnell stared 
in dazed bewilderment. 

“But there—there was a shot!” he gasped. “A 
shot—and her scream. I can’t understand-” 

“He hasn’t finished his story, doctor,” said Wiggly 
Price. “He hasn’t told you how he worked the 
clever scheme of covering up the shooting, trying 
to make it appear suicide.” He pointed to the 
bits of porcelain and the tallow. “There’s the 
answer to that. He took the blaek porcelain vase 
as his alibi, put gunpowder into it and tamped it in 
with candle tallow, made a sort of firecracker. 
The wick of the candle, from which he stripped 
the tallow, was his fuse. He lighted it and went 
out of the house again, pretending that he’d for- 


316 


THE PORCELAIN MASK 


gotten his keys and had been locked out; that 
was an excuse to get the butler up and to have 
a witness to his alibi. Bates could truthfully swear 
that he was downstairs when the explosion sounded. 

“Those black specks in the tallow that have been 
worrying me all morning, were burned gunpowder. 
Don’t think I’d have obtained the answer to it, 
though, if I hadn’t handled the pieces of the vase, 
and a black smudge—burned powder again—came 
free on my fingers. 

“After that it was clear; the murderer was some 
one who wasn’t on the second floor; that could mean 
only one person—Gilmore himself.” 

Lasker, the assistant district attorney, leaped to 
his feet. 

“But in that case,” he demanded, “what about 
the scream and Joan Sheridan’s silk dressing gown 
and the bloodstains?” 

“I fancy,” answered Wiggly, “that it was Miss 
Sheridan who screamed.” 

Bates, the butler, gave a violent start. 

“It was!” he exclaimed. “I said at the time 
it sounded just like the time she had screamed when 
Mr. Kirklan was thrown by his horse.” 

Gilmore spoke again. “Yes,” he said, “the shot | 
that awakened the house was not a shot, but the j 
explosion of the powder in the vase. When I ' 
thought Helen was dead, I was suddenly afraid. j 

“Who would believe that was the way it had < 
happened? They would arrest me, send me to 
prison, and I was suddenly a coward. I—I don’t 
know how I happened to think of what I did; 
it just came to me suddenly, every detail of it. ^ 

“In my own room, in a closet, was a box of 



WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER 


317 


shotgun shells that I had used for duck hunting 
last fall. It was a simple matter to remove 
the wads and take out the powder from two 
shells and pour it into the vase. I had to go 
downstairs for the candle. That is all; it would 
take ten minutes or so for the candle wick to 
burn down to the powder. I went out of the 
house, but returned almost immediately and rang 
the bell. Bates let me in; I—I had to detain him 
downstairs until the explosion. 

“When the scream came, I was even more 
startled than Bates. I could not understand that. 
And then when we got to the top of the stairs 
a door slammed, and the door to her room was 
open. I had left it closed; also I had turned off 
the lights, and they were burning. 

“You can imagine the torture I was in. I tried 
to make myself speak, but I was a coward. I 
was afraid of the consequences. I would have 
spoken, if the net had tightened about Sarbella; I 
want that understood, that I should not have let 
an innocent man suffer. 

“Then Haskins in the house—dead—it seemed to 
make me safe, to solve the whole terrible situation. 
And it was not murder. Believe me or not, I 
have told the truth.” 

Joan Sheridan lifted her head. “Yes,” she said, 
“he has told the truth. I had it from—from her 
own lips.” 

“What!” cried Gilmore. “You can’t mean that 
she—she was still alive. Merciful Heaven, I let 
her die!” 

“I was unable to sleep,” Joan went on slowly. 
“I had started downstairs for a book. As I passed 


318 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

the door of her room I heard her moaning. I 
opened the door and went in. I switched on the 
lights, bent over her; that must have been when 
the hairpin fell from my hair, and I got the blood 
on my sleeve. She was dying. She gasped out 
that Kirklan had shot her by accident. And that 
was when I screamed. The vase exploded an 
instant later.” Her head lifted. “I realize that 
I am under oath; Helen told me with her own 
lips that it was an accident.” 

Wiggly Price wondered if this were true, or a 
superb falsehood to save the man she loved. 

“If it was an accident, why didn’t you talk?” 
Wiggly countered. 

“The vase, his effort to hide by a porcelain mask 
what had really happened,” she answered. 

“And that was why you were so sure that 
Sarbella was innocent?” 

Joan nodded. 

“But you stated on your oath,” pressed Wiggly, 
“that you did not hear the shot.” 

“That was the technical truth,” answered Joan. 
“It was not a shot.” 

There fell silence; Doctor Bushnell fussed nerv¬ 
ously- with some papers on the table, notes he 
had been taking of the testimony. The jurors, 
although still dazed by it all, looked toward him 
expectantly. 

“Gentlemen,” he said slowly, “you have heard the 
evidence and the—er—confession. You have heard 
Miss Sheridan’s statement of the dying words from 
the Gilmore woman’s lips. I might add, as the 
examining physician, that the nature of the wound 
makes it plausible that it could have been inflicted 


WIGGLY MAKES A WAGER 


319 


in such a struggle for possession of the pistol as 
Mr. Gilmore has described. Mind you, gentlemen, 
I am not trying to sway your verdict; I merely 
state that the nature of the wound makes it plau¬ 
sible. Are there any questions that you wish to 
ask of any witness?” There were no questions; 
perhaps the jury was still too aghast to think of 
any. “Very well, the witnesses will retire, while 
the coroner’s jury considers the case.” 

When Wiggly Price stepped out to the porch he 
found himself beside Sergeant Tish. 

“Well, Tish,” he said. “I told you that I was 
going to do it, and I did.” 

Sergeant Tish grinned feebly. “I gotta hand it 
to you, you did,” he admitted. “And to think it 
was Gilmore that did the croak! You didn’t have 
that doped out. Ain’t it funny now that he didn’t 
watch his chance and make away with the evidence? 
Guess he thought it was so clever nobody would 
get wise. I wonder if the girl was lying about 
the Gilmore woman telling her it was an accident.” 

Wiggly pursed his lips and toyed with some¬ 
thing in his hand, the black hairpin. 

“I wonder, too,” he murmured. “But, whether 
she was or not, Gilmore’s story was straight, dead 
straight. It was an accident, but he got panic and 
tried to cover it up by—what did Miss Sheridan 
call it?—^the porcelain mask.” 

“Aw, g’wan!” grunted Tish derisively. 

“Tish, I’ll lay you three wagers: First, that the 
coroner’s jury brings in a verdict of death by 
accident; second, that the district attorney’s office 
will never go behind that verdict and bring Gilmore 


320 THE PORCELAIN MASK 

-% 

to trial; third, that Gilmore and Joan Sheridan are 
married within a year.” 

Tish snorted, but did not accept; had he done 
so, Wiggly would have won the first two and lost 
the third. It was almost two years before the 
last prophecy was fulfilled. 

THE END. 


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